


In a World Without Gold

by SweetCrazy_DramaQueen



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 23:38:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 39,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetCrazy_DramaQueen/pseuds/SweetCrazy_DramaQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How much different would their lives have been had Edward changed his course a long time ago?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What They Were

  
  
**Spoiler Alert** ; no read if you haven't finished the game.  
Ye have been warned.

* * *

_Mexico, Tulum, March 1716_

“An’ here’s one more of ya bloody keys.” Edward threw the key over the polished surface of the mahogany table.

Across the object both James Kidd and Ah Tabai were bended over maps and quietly discussing business when Edward blew in without so much as a pardon. They looked up quite startled, both flinching immediately towards their weapons, but relaxed when the only thing that skidded over to them was a grey rusted key and effectively protruded their view over the maps.

Ah Tabai said nothing, opting to glare over at him instead. Edward never much liked the taller man and he ignored him all the same. Kidd, on the other hand, looked slightly impressed if not entirely interested. “Ye managed to kill ‘nother Templar?”

“You see the damn key in front of you, don’t ya?” Edward didn’t see the point of collecting these infernal keys. Unless they lead to lotsa coin and legendary glory or the Observertory, or both, he had little use for them.

But he had a debt to pay, he’ll admit as much. He killed those assassins in Havana when he played a betrayal he in no means took seriously except for the gold it offered. Those assassins were all of the same brotherhood Jim and Tabai were members of. Seeing how he liked to entertain the notion that Kidd was a friend – and he was sort of using their signature hood and skills to accomplish his own selfish ends, mayhaps he could do at least this much in return. Fetching them keys and warning other Assassins of Templars was the least he could do. Seems only fair in prospect.

Say a lot of Captain Edward Kenway, but he wasn’t a disagreeable man. Nay, not entirely, anyway.

Kidd crossed his arms under his too big a longcoat. Edward supposed the boy wanted to look bigger than he really was by wearing clothes twice his size. He wouldn’t be surprised if James was all skin and bones under those rags.

The bastard son of William Kidd send Edward a smug little smirk. “Him Templars jackanapes might as well handed over the key friendly ‘nough with yer witty charm and all.”

It was sarcastic as well as an insult to him. Kidd should be lucky there was a table between him and Edward or else something might have happened that Edward would- sort of – regret later. He wasn’t much amused, for once. “How long since we ain’t seen each other, Kidd?”

The boy’s eyes rolled upwards, thinking. “About half a year or so. What of it, Kenway?”

“Don’t lemme fill ya with shot after such a long time parting and meetin’ again, lad.”

That angered Tabai enough to get him to sneer. “As if you haven’t killed enough of our brothers and sisters, you dare to threaten another one right in front of me, pale man?!”

Edward raised his hands as if he was held on gunpoint. A grin had once again grown on his face. Mayhaps he _was_ such a disagreeable man after all, if Tabai’s anger was amusement to him. “Calm yerself there, mate. ‘Twas just a jest. Mates do that to one ‘nother, ya know. If ya do that here amongst your brotherhood you wouldn’t be such a sourly lot.”

Ah Tabai glared him down, for he was such a big man. At least a head taller than Edward and was purposely moving in the direction of him right now. The pirate stood as still as he could, expecting the ever so peace loving Tabai to hit him or something of the like, but the man did nothing but send him another vicious frown before stalking off out of the door.

Edward released a breath he did not realize he was holding. Kidd snorted out a laugh not a moment later. “Him ain’t forgiven you yet, Kenway.”

Clearly he hasn’t. Edward shrugged, peering over to the young boy not yet older than twenty. He seemed a bit young to be an assassin… or a pirate, even younger to pilot his own ship and yet the boy was wiser than him by a long shot. “What ‘bout you, Jim? You seem in a warmer mood around me than any of these assassins.”

“Nay, I haven’t forgiven ye either. But I kno’ that there’s redemption in ya yet, Kenway. Mayhaps some day you make choices that don’t benefit yer own.”

Those were some golden words Edward would have loved to believe in them. “Then ye can wait for a long time. All I want is gold to be rich and a name known enough to be feared in all the seven seas. They will tell tales of me glory hundreds of years long after our era.”

James pried his lips to a side, his brow evening into a stoic enough look. “Fame and glory are hollow victories that come at costly prizes, Kenway.”

“They are simple wants for a simple man. I’d reckon it’s nothin’ like joining a club of bravos, out to kill Templar bastards.”

Kidd frowned. “There is more to us than that!”

“And there’s be less to me than ya might think. Not like I wanted the king’s favour or control over the world, not even lotsa betties to satisfy all me needs.” He send Jim a sideways grin there, expecting his fellow lad to agree at least on that much, but Kidd was unmoved.

James sighed quietly instead, shaking his head. “ What e’er ye say, mate.”

Any jolly expression fell from Edward’s face. He heard the disappointment clearly in Kidd’s tone and somehow that bothered him.

James grabbed the key from the table, inspecting it and didn’t meet the blond pirate’s eye. “I’m guessin’ yer be off on the next tide back to Nassau?” 

“No, not immediately.” He huffed. “ We’s just returned from a long voyage and we gotta supply on some fresh water and foods before long. Them crew surely are in want of a quick rest and steady land under their feet as well. An’ I… I need to do me some hunting. Need me a new holster and of the likes.”

James looked at him for a moment. Coal dusted eyes narrowed at Edward in utter silence for a heartbeat before the kid nodded. “Supper will be served at sunset. Make sure you and yer crew are on time or no servings for ya.”

That sounded like positive progress. “You inviting me and mine to sup at your table?”

James send him a sly eye. “I’m givin’ you a chance, man. An’ since yer on our island here, better to treat ye as guests than as enemy. That didn’t go well last time, now did it? Nay. Be on time or there ain’t no servings left for ya.”

He was already walking away with the new keys Edward so graciously fetched for them. But Edward should be grateful. Him and his crew were getting free supper. “Aye aye, Captain Kidd.”

.0.

“We are family in our brotherhood. Be you fair as a man who has never seen the sun, skin as brown like expensive rum or even black like soot, it don’ matter. Mayhaps your skin is like sodden Tabaco of those Spaniards, what e’er you may be, we welcome anyone who are dedicated to our Creed.”

The missy who was speaking to Adéwale was native to the island surely, for the way she dressed, spoke and painted herself couldn’t be anything but native. At least, such was that Edward assumed. He only listened with one ear and looked on with half a glance. His only concern was that he wouldn’t lose his First Mate to these assassins. Adéwale did a splendid work in being his quartermaster and Edward came to believe that he wouldn’t leave Jackdaw in anyone else’s care except Adé’s. What would become of him and him ship, should Adéwale decide to live by this creed of this brotherhood?

Though Adé seemed interested in the woman’s tale, he wasn’t agreeing to any commitments yet. Opía Apitò was an assassin and though Edward learned through Ah Tabai that assassins and pirates don’t particularly mix, they can work well enough if they put their minds to it. James was both pirate and assassin after all, or mayhaps Edward got that notion because Ah Tabai hated him?

“And what is your creed exactly that fancies you all to dedicate yerself to this merry brotherhood of yours?” Edward broke bread at the same table as Adéwale, the female assassins Opía and with more of him crew and assassins alike.

Supper on Tulum was nearly a feast Edward wished him crew wouldn’t get too overly attached to. Granted, it wasn’t Nassau where it was always rowdy, filled with music and men merry making, but it was a tight knit nevertheless. Together, the assassins proved a less lot furred brows and frowns than Edward thought them to be. They laughed and mingled well with the Jackdaw’s citizens. And though the assassins didn’t own a single drop of alcohol on their land, thankfully their cargo had enough rum for their own lot. They were well on their way to see the bottom of their cups and the assassins had no troubles finding amusement in the royster of his crew.

“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. That is the creed we live by, Kenway.” James Kidd dropped down, forcing him a way opposite of Edward on the trestle table, chewing meat off a bone. Grease littered his fingers as well as his lips and he wiped it all off on the sleeve of his long coat.

Opía, sitting right of Adéwale heard James’ words and muttered something in an odd tongue that sounded familiarly enough to an agreement.

“Everything is permitted, aye? I do like me the sound of that. Chasin’ every desire, thinking how I like, taking what I please.” He took to himself a bottle of rum that passed over from hand to hand.

“Nay, you parrot the words man… but you do not understand them.” Before Edward was done with his swallow James yanked the thing away from him and without taking a sip himself, he passed the bottle on to Adéwale.

“Oi, I was drinking that!”

“And now Master Adéwale is drinking it. Him, too, is permitted that privilege.”

Edward stared at James, trying to make sense of that statement. In a way, Edward thought he understood it, what James was trying to teach him. On the other hand, Edward’s personal selfish code told him that in this world they live in, it was survive or die in this endless war of life and you take whatever you can that’ll aid you advancing in said war.

If James saw the confusion on Edward’s expression, he only showed it by letting a slick smirk grow on his face. “So tell me, Kenway, which Templar you nattied this key from?”

“A French chap who fancies himself to be quite with a few pistols and looks down on everyone. Julien du Casse, him pestilent rotter with a queer hat and red silk cape he likes to fly about as if him was a fuckin’ seagull.”

James looked surprised. “Julien du Casse?”

“I see you know the slimy codpiece.”

Suddenly Kidd’s tone turned serious. “You killed him, did ya?”

Edward hesitated. He didn't kill du Casse. He was in the middle of a coup at the time, surrounded by Julien du Casse's guards, within the man's own home, no less. He saw a clean opportunity to steal the key without killing the man and leaving a mess. “Nay. I cut his purse when he ain’t looking.”

“Dammit, Edward!” James jumped to his feet, looking more furious within a second than Edward had seen before – and he had seen James furious before mind ye – while he addressed him by his given name. That, though, was a first. He was attentive enough to hiss lowly and through his teeth, not to attract the attention of the other assassins. “You know we kill them Templars. Why didn’t you finish the job?”

“Killing du Casse is not _my_ job, Kidd.”

The boy grunted and stormed away from the table and their company until Edward could see him no more. 

“I’d wager you want to set sails now back to Nassau, cap’n?” Adéwalé was sitting right next besides Edward, whom caught James Kidd’s outburst well enough.

Though the quartermaster has not quite yet known his captain for a year, he already knew that Captain Kenway can pick up fights with just about anyone, except those whom he holds dear enough to call friends. And even that, by a certain extent. He was thinking that Kenway would rather leave now, as he does in most cases, now even more likely to let Kidd cool off until their next encounter, but Edward surprisingly belayed that thought.

“No, I still gotta hunt around.” The faired haired pirate bend over the table to Adé and lowered his voice. “I heard these yellow feathered owls who roam the trees in the jungle in the middle of the night sum up a hefty pouch of Pieces of Eight for its feathers back in Havana. I’m gonna see if me can hunt one tonight, if not we’ll catch the tide upon the morrow.” He only half lied to Kidd when he told his schedule to him. He told the boy he was gonna hunt, but he hadn’t said what he was going to hunt for. Lest the lad tells him that the owl was some holy symbol for their brotherhood and hunting for such is prohibited. Edward wouldn’t put it past Kidd to warn him for that.

Adé nodded. “Upon the morrow it is, cap’n.”

.0.

The crew of the Jackdaw would be sound asleep by now or passed out drunk. Only the two who were keeping watch had to hold their station aboard ship, though Edward doubted some calamity would happen here in Tulum bay. It was too late in the night – or too early in the morn, depends on how you look at it – for anyone to be still up and about. Edward had tried to catch a sleep eye for about an hour before he looked upon the moon and knew it was time to go stalk the forests of Tulum.

That yellow feathered shitebird better be found tonight. The forest was no less silent during the night as it was during the day. Crickets made music, small beds of water flowed here and there, he passed a calm looking waterfall on his way. Some little rodents ran in between the leafs in search of food. Rodents were good, Edward reckoned. Where there be rodents there could be owls about. He only needed a yellow feathered one and then he’d have more coin to save for his riches.

Edward jumped from tree branch to tree branch until he realized that if he did that, he would only scare away his prey. So he dropped down and stalked through the forest ground as quietly as possible. Soon, some bushes were rattling behind him and he hardly turned around and a jaguar was snapping towards his neck. A quick reflection with his hidden blade had the overlarge cat dead within the minute.

He skinned the creature, tucking it’s pelt in, in case someone fancied a buy in Havana and he stalked on. There were surprisingly all types of birds awake in the middle of the night in the jungle, searching for food. Some of them were bats, Edward recognized, and more than once twitches in the trees made him hopeful, only to see it were howler monkeys jumping from one tree to another. He cursed those beasts. Shouldn’t they be asleep as well? They would be scaring off his yellow feathered owl.

The sky was very slowly clearing up and by the time the dark blue turned into a purple hue, Edward gave up on his quest for his yellow feathered owl. He circled back through the jungle, passed the bushes that were silent now. No more rodents running about. He heard a parrot croak somewhere above him. Parrots were like roosters Edward mused. Both birds wake and scream at first sunlight.

Edward contemplating shooting one for its feathers. If he couldn’t catch the yellow owl, might as well make due with another. But there were thousands of other parrots in these West-Indies. Who were going to pay for that? Squat, that’s who. He passed through the beds of flowing water and the slow flowing waterfall back in the direction of his ship, until he caught movement to his right.

Edward halted, thinking it was another jaguar coming at him from the direction of the waterfall, only it was not.

Not at all.

A person was using the clean fresh waterfall as bathing place, in fact, it was a woman. The only women on this island were the assassins, Jaysus knows he ain’t having no woman aboard his ship. They bring ill omens, or so they say. Edward wasn’t big into superstition of the sort.

But this assassin chose a very very early time to get herself clean and much to Edward’s satisfaction, she was as naked as the day she was born. Pale skin, small waist and black hair plastered against her back. He caught a glimpse of a tattoo above her right shoulderblade as well as one on her left arm when she lifted said arm to wash her hair. Edward felt like a little boy seeing a woman naked for the first time when he was staring at her, though Jaysus knows he had seen his fair share of female bodies already in his life.

But there was nothing more beautiful than the sight of a bathing woman, he knows. She had her back towards him but once she was busy with her hair the side of her breast revealed to him. Nothing more beautiful than the sight of a bathing woman, indeed.

That was the thought that excited him, until said young woman turned around face forward in Edward’s direction.

And then it hit Edward in all the wrong places. He was too busy scrutinizing the woman’s body to take a gander at the rest of her features because he was sure he had seen that face before. Hells… that was… What? …No! That was no one other than James Kidd, wasn’t it?! James fuckin’ Kidd! He’s a woman? How could that be? And how the hell did Edward not know of this before? Jaysus, it should have been obvious. No more so than how obvious her gender was to him now. James Kidd, a woman? Bloody hell.

He stared at her. And stared and stared. Ice blue eyes following every movement of her washing herself under the spring of the waterfall. She was a goddamn woman!

She did like cleaning herself. Sometimes she wondered how men could stand going days without it, but she realized since years ago that it was impossible to be a woman and forgo personal hygiene. Especially a woman who suffers all the same conditions as the rest of them of her sex does. Those few days every moonturn was just a pain in the arse and the most uncomfortable days she dared to experience. Once she received a cut on her arm from a Spanish brigadier and the healing of such was less a hell than moonblood ever was.

It was tricky to perform what she did while she was aboard a ship, but as she was a captain of her own brig, there was no sailor or mate who could ask her how and what she does when she was in the privacy of her cabin. When she was between her brothers and sisters on Tulum, she cared not for the fact of her gender, for all of them knew what she was. And even if she needed to do her business, it was on hours she knew she would be seen less. Early in the morning or quite late in the night. This spot with the waterfall wasn’t new to her, she had several throughout the island, but it was closest to the village of Tulum and not always she fancied a long travel through the jungle to reach the other places.

A rustle between the leaves was all the warning she got before a voice spoke to her.

“More a woman than a man, I see.”

She gasped, jumping a foot into the air and hasty reached for her clothes to hide her body, nearly slipping from the wet mud underfoot in the progress to do so. She had no less than a second to grab her longcoat with the hidden blades and turning around to find herself eye to bloody eye with no one other than Edward Kenway himself.

“E-Edward!”

“Aye, that’s mine name. What be yours, lass?”

She seemed distraught, panicked and wet. “Why are you- what are you doing here?! And h-how long have you been here?” She was gasping, breathing hard, frantically looking around while hugging the longcoat to the front of her body.

Edward just simply stood calmly, eyeing her and actually finding her agony amusing. He waited until she finished stammering her questions and checking about if there were more of him in hiding.

“I’ve been hanging ‘round long enough to know that James wasn’t as much as a kid as me thought he was. Quite the body of a grown _woman_ , if ya ask me.”

She was unable to form a reply for the next few seconds. Her mouth formed an O now, her eyes as wide as a full moon and her breath still hasn’t settled down. Black wet hair was stuck to her forehead like rat tails, still dripping water onto her lashes. A split second later she was glaring at him so heatedly, he could’ve combust into flames had looks been able to kill. Lightning quick she was, indeed, for she exerted her hidden blades and was blatantly ready to stab him had Edward not caught her wrist.

“Careful there, hearty. Don’t want your longcoat slippin’ from ya, now do ye?” He couldn’t believe how much joy he was taking from this. He should be more upset that this female has managed to fool him for so long and so many people besides, but she was wet and she was naked and she was panicking all over, and if she wasn’t just about wet and naked and panicking, he would be straight up laughing.

“You bastard!” She was letting her voice come more naturally now. Within he heard the feminine shrill he missed up until that moment.

“Me? So says the supposedly bastard of William Kidd or is that as non-existent as yer cock?”

“I’ll make _your_ cock non-existent!” She seemed really mad. This wasn’t a fury she displayed like she had before when he did something fickle that offended her or like last night when he revealed he didn’t kill Julien du Casse. No, this was a murderous intent, unforgiving kind of anger which makes Edward wonder if he’ll indeed live to survive this morning. “Leave!”

“No need to threaten a man’s boons, lass. I’m not so sure you understand how precious they are.” Edward had an inkling that he shouldn’t be taunting a highly lethal woman in such a vulnerable state, but since she was vulnerable and naked, he might as well.

“By Jove Edward, if you so much as breathe a word of this to anyone, I will hunt ya down and skin you worse than an albino whale!” He still held her wrist prison and she reckoned he might as well. If he as much as he release her, she mayhaps will try to stab the oaf again.

“Relax, yer secret is safe with me.”

They stared at each other for a while. The water of the fall was the only sound between them. She was probably weighing if he was worthy enough to harbour her majestic secret or slit his jugular where he stands.

She came to an judgement then. “You’ll rue what’s coming to ya if you don’t.” The hidden blade was tucked back into its unarmed form and Edward let her go.

Immediately she jumped a few paces away without turning her back to him, for he knew her backside was bare and she was tightly hugging her longcoat to her front.  “What are you doing here, Edward?”

“Was hunting, I was. And then I stumbled upon yer secret abode.”

She glared at him, almost too frightened to ask her next question. “How much… did you see?”

Edward’s blue eyes glistened and by the bloody slow shite-eating grin on his face she already got her answer. “Everything.”

“Curse you, Kenway! Have you no sense of modesty?”

“I ain’t the one who lacks modesty here.” He wasn’t improving his matter with her, no he wasn’t, but sometimes the remarks just flew out of his mouth. “And yer name’s not James, t’is it?”

She wiped a few wet bangs from her eyes. She was still scowling up at him but a least she was gave him the honour of her real name. “No. It’s Mary. Mary Read. Now I want you to leave.”

He ignored her command. “Mary, eh? How is it you came to be a pirate, without a single soul finding out about your true…" He shot her a sideways leer at this. "...sex?”  

She hugged her longcoat tighter to her before she shrugged. A small movement that had more water drops rolling from her hair to her collarbones. “The same as I’ve been foolin’ ye.”

Edward commanded his own eyes to focus on face and not down the rest of her. “No one to discover what you are, a female, a pirate and a captain no less. How long yer been capiteering your own ship for, a year or two?”

“Three years, exact. What, Kenway, is that envy I spot there? Because a woman has been a captain of her own brig longer than you?” She sounded proud but she could’ve looked more conceited were she not the one in such a delicate state of undress.

“Nay, who gives you such thoughts? It’s only said that it bodes ill for a woman to be aboard a ship and the dangers that could befell on men who are sailing with.”

If Mary had a coin every time she heard that saying about ill luck if a woman’s on ship, she’d be rich enough to quit pirateering for life. The very reason why she remained dressed as a man was because more than one captain she used to sail with when she was a child believed this superstition. She had been on a ship more than half her life by now. It’s what she knew and she wouldn’t give it up for the world.

Few men sailed with women but no man took commands of one as captain. If she had to dress, talk and walk as a man to keep sailing, she would. It wasn’t easy, but she learned to live with it. That wouldn’t count the same for everyone, she knew. She liked to believe that Edward Kenway was beyond such superficial fiction as he expressed just now. Either that, or he simply doesn’t like the idea of her piloting her own ship before him.

“Jaysus how is it that you’re a woman?”

“Is that really somethin’ that needs explaining? You’re not intimidated by a woman now, are you?”

Edward raised his chin defiantly and crossed his arms. “No.”

She managed a sly smile on the corner of her lips. “Yea, you are.”

“I’m not.” He wasn’t intimidated by anyone or anything.

She dropped the longcoat on purpose then. It was a bittersweet victory to see his jaw slackened to the point he could’ve easily caught some flies.

Of all the things she could do, he didn’t expect her to do that.

Unabashedly, he stared her up and down, from the top of her head to her heels, just like she thought he would. The man had no filter or propriety to speak of and women were nothing but enjoyables to him. As he was wont to do, he wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to see a woman’s naked body.

And she took advantage of his distraction to grab her weapon. The next time he blinked, Edward had a pistol directed at his chest. “I told ya to leave.”

“That was a cheap move, Miss Read, distracting me like this.” He smirked down at her, noticing how clean her face was from all the coal and dust she disguised herself under. But then she cocked her pistol set to firing and he slowly raised his hands.

This wasn’t something she would do had he been someone entirely else. But part of her wanted to catch the pompous money-digging Edward Kenway off guard. “Nothin’ I wouldn’t ‘ave done in any other situation. Mayhaps with a different tact, aye.”  

He coughed before he set to clear his throat. “Remind me to use it next time when I find meself in an iffy with the Spanish.”

“Ye plan to bare yerself in front of the eyes of the Spanish? That’ll shock ‘em for certain.”

“I meant the different tact.”

She smiled for him. “I’m sure yous was gonna use it anyway. Now,” She cocked the pistol to his nose. “Turn around, Kenway.”

She meant for him to leave her to her privacy completely and if Edward had some decency he would have, but since the man lacks any such morals, he simply turned on his heel basically not leaving his spot with his back to her. She wasn’t going to argue with him while she was still dressed in her birthday suit and the sun was fully coming up above them. It meant that everyone was waking up soon and she didn’t want to be seen like this by no one else.

Shrugging on her pants and her boots and binding her chest clumsily, Edward shifted his weight from one leg to another in front of her. In the silence the buckling of belts and the soft swish of leather was loud.

“So tell me, Lady Mary, is William Kidd even your real father or is he just a guise to be more acceptable in our society of men?”

There was a little of frustration in her voice when she grumbled her reply. “I wouldn’t know. Me mum used to tell me how she once met the infamous William Kidd before me was born, but those tales could be wind. She didn’t know who me brother’s father was either.” There was a short pause. “And I ain’t a lady.”

There was a jest he could’ve gone with, but he didn’t know if she was still aiming her pistol at him. “You have a brother?”

Edward peered over his shoulder, sort of hoping she was still indecent enough to give him another eyeful, but she was tying her hair back into the red bandana he was so used seeing by now. Her blouse closed up to her neck to hide the swell of her breast.

“ _Had_ a brother.” She confirmed, finishing her hair. “He died when I was little. Mark was him name, I remember, he used to bring bread if there was no food. But then he died by some disease and me mum told me I had to pretend I was him to get money from me grandparent.”

Ah, the colourful law that only men could inherit. There was some insight on how Mary Read turned into James Kidd, even if a lot of it was still vague. “Why not take him name instead of James?”

The corner of her lips curled downwards. Now that Edward knew her true gender, it was hard seeing her as a man again. Every inch of her looked like a woman and again he wondered how it had not been obvious from the start. He thought it was because James Kidd was still young, not yet a man but also not quite a child. But he was a she all along, as he should have known.

“That’s a tale for another time.” She intoned, shrugging his question off. “Let’s go.”

.0.

They had hardly put foot out of the jungle and Ah Tabai, along with two other assassins, were crouched behind a bush overlooking the village. The dark assassin heard the two approach from behind and he gave a vicious enough glare to Edward once they were spotted.

Affronted, Edward wondered what Tabai’s deal was now? Did he woke up from the wrong side of his straw heap? “What’s going on?”

Ah Tabai signalled them over with a flat movement of his hand. It was enough to have Mary going instantly stealth mode. “Quiet.” She told Edward in a hard commanding voice. He only copied her movements until they reached Ah Tabai.

“I knew that you were nothing but trouble the moment I set eyes on you.” The head of the assassins hissed at Edward’s face. “You’ve been careless and you’ve been followed and now my brothers and sisters are hold prisoners by Templars.”

“What?” That was impossible. He couldn’t have been followed. “What ya talkin’ about old man?”

“This.” He parted some of the bush and angrily pointed to the redcoats holding several assassins at gunpoint down below.

“Brits. What are they doing here?! When did they even get here? How?”

“Before the sun was fully above us, they snuck into the bay with the morning mist.” Ah Tabai never stopped looking angry. “Not Brits, pale man. French.”

The pirate puckered his lips and shrugged sideways, always taking light of a situation. “French? Then you got nothing to fear for.” Everyone knew they were cackling flamingos without any bite. 

Mary whisper-hissed his name behind him. “Edward!”

Ah Tabai certainly didn’t share his amusement. Then again, few men did. “Let him. Hopefully he will find it as funny if he knows they got his crew men prisoner too. How much do you think their life is worth to him?”

His crew managed to get caught? Edward peered through the trees and thankfully – or mayhaps not - the enemy ships sails poked over the line of trees. Right next to the smaller Jackdaw, was a much bigger, impressive frigate flying French colours. Moreover, it was Julien du Casse’s colours.

“Those are not some royal men. It’s Du Casse.”

Both Mary and Tabai sneered in choir. “What?!”

“Julien du Casse? The man you stole the Templar key from?”

Edward almost didn’t want to confirm. “The very same.”

She knew it, she bloody knew it. He couldn’t finish a damn job if it ain’t had anything to do with gold. “Damn you to hell, Kenway. When you hafta kill a man, you do it!”

Not this again. “I told you, Mary, it wasn’t my job to kill him.” Not back then, anyway.

Ah Tabai cut in swiftly. “He called you by true your name, James.” It wasn’t a question more than a statement. He turned to said woman. “You told him the truth?”

She shared a glance with Edward. She didn’t want to say that he stumbled over her in the jungle and everything that went on there. “Sort of. I shall tell you of it later, mentor.”

Ah Tabai didn’t trust it, but he let it die for now in light of their more urgent matters. He nodded. “Focus on freeing our brothers and sisters. We shall deal with all consequences… later.”

It felt like a threat to Edward, but in this case the blond wouldn’t have opposed much to it. He reckoned that Julien du Casse’s appearance in Tulum was his doing. He was careless and, as Mary said, he should’ve killed the French bastard when he had the chance. At the time, he had bigger things in mind. Like, lots of gold and plunder.

As soon as Ah Tabai left to save his assassins, Mary hit Edward on the arm. “You will call me James Kidd as before.”

Lest someone more figure it out, he assumed. “Aye.”

“And take this.” Mary handed him a blowpipe with a few darts.

Edward eyed the thing with distaste. “A blowpipe. Really?”

“What, you wanted to go in, pistols blazing and cutlasses flashing in the sun?” Yes, that was exactly his plan. She read the answer right off his face too. “This isn’t a Schooner yer boarding, Kenway. One peep and those redcoats will shoot and kill the assassins.”

“You want me to eliminate them… with a blowpipe?”

She didn’t like his pessimistic tone, either. “It’s silent and efficient, you fool. Take it and go free your crew.”

.0.

Freeing his crew was exactly what he did, but he didn’t stop there. He freed quite a few assassins as well, he assumed Mary would like that if she knew. He may not see their way of the assassins but he was guesting on their village and now he brought trouble to said village. He couldn’t leave them to their own defences.

She was also right about the blowpipe. Silent and efficient he put unaware redcoats to sleep only to never wake again. It was the cleanest death he could give them.

But then everything went wrong when Edward went to free his First Mate, Adéwalé. The whole situation could have been avoided had Edward paid attention enough to his surroundings. His quartermaster was tied up alone with no guards to speak off. An easy freeing the blond assumed, but he had not even so much as started to cut Adéwalé’s ropes and suddenly there were dozens of redcoats circled around him, all holding guns at every angle.

“What’s this? An ambush?” For the second time that day, he was held at gunpoint. Admittedly, he enjoyed it much more when the holder had been a wet naked woman than these French sneaksby.  

The redcoated circle parted when no one else but the target himself, Julien du Casse appeared in front of the two. “Bonjour Edouard! Such a pleasure to see dyou again.”

“Du Casse! What makes you here, you rotten tosspot?”

“Ah, where does the list begin, I wonder? We lost our Sagé thanks to dyou. Dyou paide an insult to me and my hospitality. Dyou infiltrated my private home, murdered my guards, exploded my plantation.” By the time he finished Du Casse’s pleasant demeanour changed completely to rage. “I once told dyou I hated liars and assassinos. Turns out, dyou are both.”

Julien nodded to his bravos and they all filtered out in the island.

“Du Casse, if you so much as touch anyone here, I’ll-“ Edward couldn’t even finish his threat towards the French asshole before he heard gunshots in the distance.

A scream followed it, loud and resonating throughout the whole village and then more gunshots.

“I’ll kill you for this, du Casse! Mark me word!” He would’ve loved to cut through these guards if he wasn’t held on gunpoint himself by every angle around him.

Minutes and more gunshots ticked by and Edward nervously shifted around while under guard of the hired redcoats. Their muskets were close enough to poke him through the eye, which he would have loved to do with each and all over them, but just one wrong move can make any of these men’s finger trigger and he’d be done for.

A moment later, half the men of the circle were all knocked out and limping towards the floor sound asleep. Before the others had any idea what was going on, several assassins jumped from nowhere and stabbed the remaining men from their blind spot. One of those assassins was a pirate.

“Mar- uh, Kidd! Took you long enough.” He nearly called her by her given name there.

She looked up at him, scowling at him. “We’re not out of this yet, Kenway.”

He nodded. “Leave it to me.”

.0.

All the dead assassins were gathered around and put in the midst of some Mayan ruins. It wasn’t until later that Edward noticed the fallen were laid on the old age logo of the Assassins Brotherhood carved into the ground. Other assassins around the dead were praying or saying their goodbyes.

Thank Jaysus none of his crew got killed while Julien’s men were about. Du Casse and all his men were now in their watery grave on the bottom of the sea, food for nothing more than sharks and mermaids.

Ah Tabai was loud enough to be heard this time, storming towards Edward with the intent of murder. Mary was trailing along with him, trying to keep up with his powerful gait but since she was significantly shorter than the man, she practically had to run along. As soon as the assassin was standing in front of the blond pirate, he pointed to the dead men and women gathered on the ground.

“This is all your doing, Captain Kenway.”

Edward was baffled. “My doing?”

“You carrying out Duncan Walpole’s betrayal wasn’t enough, it seems. You failed to kill a Templar and his associates on the spot, have the blood of our brothers and sisters on your hands when you were in Havana and straight up let the Templar Julien du Casse to our bureau here, and murder more of our brethren.”

Oops. Edward leaned away from Ah Tabai, feeling guilty enough not to answer with a sceptical remark but not enough to apologise. He switched his gaze between Tabai and Mary, too nervous to keep looking the taller man in the eye.  

“And now you rob us of our homes, Captain Kenway, because they know where we operate. There’s little faith in you and if it weren’t for Mary, I would have made you sorry for your actions. You are no longer welcome here.” Ah Tabai’s words were steel and final before he brushed a hard shoulder to Edward’s as he passed him.

Mary, disguised as James Kidd as ever, stood glaring at him too with her arms crossed. Edward did nothing but give her a sheepish smile in return. “All frowns and furrowed brows, eh?”

“You deserve the scorn, Edward. Nothing in this world seems to move you except for the sound of coin, regardless of those around you. And the consequences of such is this.” She waved about to the dead assassins lying on top of the Assassin’s logo. “Can you blame Ah Tabai for his words, after all this loss?”

The pirate stared at the dead with a little more remorse now. She was right. He could whine all he want for Tabai’s overreacted anger, but he was still indisputably right. The assassins lost their own and their home and it was all because of Edward’s own greed.

“Aye. I’ll be leaving then.”

Before he headed to his ship, she called him. “No, Edward. I’ll show you something before ye leave.”

A pigeon flew by with a piece of paper attached to its leg. An assassination contract.

.0.

_Jamaica, Kingston, June 1716_

The sage, Bartholomew Roberts escaped Edward’s clutches again. “For the second time. And I don’t suppose it’s your fault.”

It was raining and even though the windmill was massive, it offered little to no roof to hide under from the piss pouring from the skies. Fat drops of water rolled off of Mary’s face and dripped down Edward’s hair.

“My fault?” She yelled through the hiss of rain. “I came to kill Laurens Prins and you nearly cocked that up for me as well, if ya weren’t forced to end him where you stood!”

“I only came for the sage. If you killed Prins too soon, I wouldn’t have known where him Sage is.”

“And do you know where he is now?” Admittedly, Edward did not. Roberts was a slippery one, he was. But Mary knew the answer well enough too. “You made me still my blade for naught and wasted me time, Kenway. And now the whole lot of Kingston is lookin’ for us.”

“Now now, _Mary_ , don’t tell me a skilled assassin such as ye can’t outsmart those redcoated simpletons.”

She wasn’t amused by a long shot. Rain made the soot and coal drip from her face, but the darkness didn’t let up on her features and she still looked like she was off to stab him with her hidden blade. “It is not I whom I worry ‘bout. What of those assassins who roam Kingston? They shall be hunted down too, for Christ, Edward! Do you really not care for anyone but yer own?!”

Why does it seem like everything Edward does thinking he would help her and her wretched brotherhood, it ended up him mucking it all up? He wouldn’t stand around and let himself take the blame. “T’is not like it would have made a difference. Ya wanted to kill ‘em in broad daylight and ye still would have been wanted.”

He didn’t know if she huffed because he managed to infuriate her more or if his words were true. It would be a rarity, if he had the rights for once over her. “It don’t matter now, don’t it?” She sneered at him. “Prins is dead and once again we search for the Sage while we lost this battle.”

Edward was just about to ask in which battle they lost, when he remembered the assassins losing their hidden bureau in Tulum and Jaysus know where else.  “Did your brotherhood find a new location to settle?”

Mary blinked at him. “We shifted over to Cape Bonavista for now, aye. We shall not linger there long, for it’s too close to Tulum to vestige. Anyone lookin’ for us might find us too easily.”

“I shall have something that’ll make up for your lost settlement in Tulum.”

She snorted rudely. “Do you got yerself a secret cave under ya brig?”

He frowned. “Just meet me sunrise on the docks upon the morrow, aye?”

.0.

“Sunrise is an awfully early time, Kenway.” Though she looked sleepy and tired and probably a bit angry, she met him just on time where the Jackdaw was docked.

“The early birds eats them worms first, Kidd. Thought that would have been one o’ ya creeds.” Not that he was fond of waking up early either and he would have not to, had they not a coming tide to catch. He didn’t want to linger longer in Jamaica than he would have to.

“Just tell me what ye got me to show, Kenway.”

Not much of a morning person she was, was she? He handed her over a map with sea coordinates. “Give this to Ah Tabai… and whoever else more whose locations were revealed to the Templars.”

She glazed over it. “This is way south of Nassau.”

“Ye have a good eye. Now what is the point of bringing the lot of ya to Nassau, eh?”

She thinned him a distrustful look. “Because that’s the only place ya call yer haven.”

She didn’t have much faith in him. Not that he could blame her with all that has transpired in such a short amount of time. “Nay, this isn’t even close to Nassau. A bit on the most eastern horizon of Cuba. Let Ah Tabai sail over and meet me there. The forts will be in no one’s way and the bay is protected by rocks. I hope you can pilot through a hard tide.”

“What you take me for, Kenway, a bloody lubber?”

No, he’s taking her for a woman. But a fairly good female sailor nonetheless. “Meet me there a month from now. I’d wager you’ll like the sight of things.”

.0.

Adéwale wasn’t too far off when Edward returned from his meeting with James Kidd. Upon seeing his face, the captain smirked. “You got something to add, Adé?”

“It makes a deal better for you to do what you are planning to do, cap’n, but are you sure it is for the right?”

The citizens of the Jackdaw cheered once Edward put a foot on his ship and Adéwale yelled the memo that the captain had the helm. “I haven’t have the foggiest idea. Kidd has a fancy way at picking at my conscious that gives me pause. Don’t I owe them this much, aye?”

Adéwale smiled. “You are a far better man than you give yerself credit, cap’n.”

.0.

_Bahamas, Great Inagua, August 1716._

For the past week Edward spend most of the day on a viewpoint over the bay every day until three ships were sighted on the horizon. Thankfully the weather behaved and the sea was as calm as a sleeping babe, so navigating between the high rocks was easy enough. Soon the docks was filled with three strange brigs alongside the Jackdaw, but at least one of them was Mary Read’s own.

Assassins filled out, looking more common than Edward expecting them to. They rolled and carried out good they managed to bring along from their old homes. A few children even were already running up and down the docks. That was something Edward didn’t know they had at all; children. They were no more than a handful, and each different of age but no older than 12 years.

Soon Ah Tabai jumped out, his expression flat when he approached Kenway, silent as the night.

Edward waved his arm to the small town behind him. “Welcome to Great Inagua gents. A place I commandeered with me own two hands.”

“Did you now, did ya?”Ah, of course he couldn’t forget Mary or as she was better known as; James Kidd. She suddenly appeared behind him, sort of, if he wasn’t expecting her as well. “From whom did ye nick it?”

“An old friend.” His blue eyes smirked more amusement than anything else. “I ain’t stolen it, he gave it to me on him dying breath.” Edward turned back to Tabai. “I believe you’ve met him. Julien du Casse.”

“The French Templar? This town is his?” Edward couldn’t make out if Tabai was pleased or dissatisfied with that fact.

“Was his, matter of fact. After him plantation fell, he was kind enough to name me governor of his humble abode. Freed the slaves, built a couple of homes that ain’t made out of wood, these new docks, as well some stores and such.”

Mary pursued her lips when she looked up the place. “I do not fail to see ye built yerself a brothel as well.”

Ah Tabai gave Edward an once over but remained otherwise silent.

Edward chose to ignore her words, preferring to set a more amiable air between himself and the dark assassin. “You and yours are welcome to it, Tabai.”

Both Mary and Tabai took a gander about town, Though there weren’t a lot of folk, the place seemed lively and healthy and well-guarded.

“An old home to a Templar, huh? He must have many secrets.” And she was fond of discovering Templar secrets. “You planned the whole island out yet?”

“Some. Not all of it.” That remind him that he still had to show her something. “Follow me-“

“Let’s go find out then.” She was already walking up the path towards the jungle before he could finish. “Tabai will be giving hand to them making port. Now come on. Keep up!”

The jungle was full of noise and sounds of nature. They didn’t stay on ground for long though. Mary climbed the thick tree trunks and Edward was forced to follow. Grateful for their skills they jumped from tree to tree through the vast forest. It was only well they took to higher ground for they spotted a black panther directly below them on their way through, who would’ve surely attacked them had they been walking there.

Soon they found the open space that overlooked the other half of the island. The jungle so thick, the green trees was the only difference to the blue skies and seas on the horizon. Down the overgrown bushes, a waterfall rushed fresh water down a waterbed and Edward pointed to take that direction.

“I assumed you’ll like this.”

She was slipping off some branches and climbing her way down. “Not sure what to expect then. Yer assumptions ‘aven’t always been the best.”

“Would you just climb down, woman?”

She laughed at his expense and to a rarity he said nothing of it. He was always quick with his wit, mostly to make others feel and look like a fool. Such men weren’t as gracious to be made a fool of, once their turn came.

“Alright, Kenway. Tell me, what is this place?” There was a wild tall waterfall slushing water from above them. The air was always filled with mist of the water spray when it splashed on the bottom underneath. Once the sun reflected its rays on the water, a rainbow glittered above them. Nothing that she hadn’t seen before on Tulum. “’Cuz if this is s’ppose to impress me, it ain’t workin’. “

The light on the waters resonated in Edward’s eyes, making them a clearer blue than normal. “Ye mean that ye don’t know?” He asked, trying to be mysterious. He wasn’t.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Know whot?”

He walked besides the edge of pool, following the line to the rushing waterfall and nodded for her to follow him with. She wasn’t sure where he was taking her, but in the name of exploring, which she was wont to do either way, she fell in his footsteps. Although she wondered where in the hell he was taking her, because this road was going nowhere.

Until he slipped behind the stream of the waterfall.

“Oi, Kenway?” Where did he go? He didn’t fall in the water or something did he? “Kenway?” No answer. “Edward?”

“Aye, come here, lass.”

More annoyed that he called her ‘lass’ than that he disappeared on her, she found the gap behind the waterfall where Kenway was awaiting her with a smirk. It was a cave of sorts, big and hollow and lightened clearly enough when the sun filtered through the clear waterfall. The noise of water crashing on the stones below was loud and permanent but this was a view that was stunning.

For once she gaped about with like a fish out of water, enjoying the view of the greenery of the jungle through the crystal clear waters inside the cave. “How did ya even find this place, Kenway?”

Edward shrugged, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly. “This place is meant for you, actually.”

She quit staring around to cut him a clear look. “What?”

“For when you need to do yer, eh… personal business.” It felt awkward to say that and Edward didn’t do awkward. Granted, the conversation went much smoother in his mind. “If this place is going to be yer new settlement an’ all, I’d wager ya don’t wanna get caught… like the last time.”

Not that he minded one bit last time, but he reckoned he enjoyed himself far more than she had at that moment. At least in here she was covered entirely inside the cave behind the waterfall and no one will be able to spot her before she spots anyone approaching herself.

She stared at him incredulously and quite speechless for once. “You searched this… for me?” That was nearly impossible wasn’t it? Edward Kenway was nothing but a selfish bastard, he wouldn’t do anything for anyone else if it didn’t profit him.

“Well, I more found it by accident of the likes.” Not entirely true; he was searching for hidden chests of treasures about the island. And this spot was as good as any.

Either way, he did think it suited her well enough when he proposed the bureau to move to Great Inagua. It was one of the sights he thought she’d like.

And she did, by the looks of it. There was a smile reserved for him that halted him.

“I… Thank you, Edward.”

.0.

She dared to race him back towards the village upon their return. A feat she immensely liked because it shows that concerning their skills, she may have the upper hand in free-running through trees. She was clearly winning when she abruptly stopped in her way, Edward nearly bumping into her.

“Jaysus, Mary, why you holding on for?!”

She pointed to her left to some dense bushes with a thin trail. “What’s over there?”

How the hell would he know? He didn’t spend much time in the jungle except for searching for treasure chests and even those he haven’t found everything. “I don’t know as of yet. Why?”

“Let’s go find out, eh?” Without waiting for him she jumped down and followed a thin path to the bushes. She took point, brushed the weeds aside and discovered the entrance of a cave. “Whadda ya know? One of Julien du Casse’s secrets, I wonder?”

“I wonder less than you do, mate.” It wasn’t more a cave than it was a tunnel, one that she fearlessly head into without a single pause. There was a light at the end of the tunnel. “Monsieur du Casse wasn’t the friendliest of men. I won’t be surprised if the outcome o’ this tunnel brings us to a room of all him evildoings.”

The tunnel spaced out to an underground cellar of such, with nothing else stocked in it than chests of liquor and supplies of food.

Mary followed up another solid stair case, smirking down at him from on top the steps. “A room of all him evildoings, aye? All them French wine are most evil.” She grabbed a bottle, dusting one off. Wine was a drink only drunk by the rich. And only the European rich as well. You don’t find the drink on this side of the world. “I’d wager Monsieur du Casse don’t mind me taking one o’ him bottles, no?”

Edward shrugged carelessly. “I’m sure he’d be pleased to, such a fine gentleman him was.”

She smirked with mirth and tucked the bottle of wine under her arm, following up the staircase as she did so. “I wonder where this’ll lead us.”

It led them to a door that was locked and exceptionally heavy. It took both of them kicking and ramming against it to break through the lock and once they did, they stumbled into a finely dressed study. The door they were pushing against wasn’t a door at all, but a bookshelf posing as a hidden door.

Edward recognized the study they dropped into easily enough. “This is du Casse’s house.” A house Edward called his own now.

“A secret entrance to the house?” Mary looked about the place. She could tell the house must be enormous, for the study alone was twice as big as the cabin in her brig. “Or more a secret exit in times of need?”

“Templars and their secrets.” Edward won’t raise an eyebrow to that.

“Templar he may be, but Monsieur du Casse had some fine taste, him did.” She walked about the study, looking at the maps lingering around and twirling the mini globe around its ashes. She even twist her neck to her right to properly read some titles of the books on the other shelves.

That was a new fact to Mary he didn’t know she was capable of. “You know yer letters?”

She blinked and twisted towards him, where he remained stationed while she explored the study. He already knew the house, of course. “Aye, I do.” She boasted proudly. “Howe’er, I can’t read French yet.” She nodded towards said books, which Edward assumed were written in Julien du Casse’s native language. “Me brother started to teach me letters before him died, I recall. Afterwards, I picked up along my time as cabin boy of various captains I sailed with.”

How long has she been sailing for, he wondered?  

She wasn’t going to tell him much about the past because she took to the corridor that led to the rest of the house. “How big is this place?”

“Big enough for a rich man to live comfortably.”

She walked through all the rooms, whistling here and there. Julien du Casse had some fine taste indeed. Every chamber to the manor was richly furnished with deep mahogany furniture, plush chairs and longseats, tall windows that let in more than enough light and deep velvet curtains to keep such light hid away should he want it to. The floors were so new they didn’t even creak once you step on them, several intricate carpets around. No room had the same wallpaper, some were dark, some were light, some were flourished, some were striped. There were no more than four bedchambers, each furnished with a giant four-poster bed covered by sheer drapes to keep the mosquitos and flies out during the night. Besides two drawing-room, a kitchen of the same size as the study, some servant rooms and music hall, the sitting room was the biggest of the whole manor. It was decorated with a long table that could seat twenty guests, a crystal chandelier hanging dramatically above it. Tapestries of sea battles and French castles hung about some walls as well.

It was the first time Edward saw Mary looking around like a child in a museum. Granted, he wasn’t much different when he first set foot in this place, but he got a stark reminder that she used to have as little and even less than he had where she came from. Unlike Caroline, who had a comfortable life as the daughter of a respected merchant. In order for Mary to stay fed, she had to pretend to be her dead brother.

Mary seemed well out of her place in this abode, but the glitter in her dark eyes betrayed how much she actually loved it. She stood in awe in every room she passed and once she stepped out of the house onto the upper part of the veranda, he heard her gasp.

It didn’t surprise him, du Casse’s home was built on the highest place of the island, overlooking the village and over the blue bay below. And beyond that, the blue blue sea of the West-Indies stretched on forever. The view was magnificent, to say the least.

“This place is beautiful.” She sounded breathless and truly awestruck.

He knew that it was of course, which is why he fancied the place for himself. But he remembered that neither she nor the assassins have a place to call home anymore. “You and the assassins are welcome to it, ya know.”

She turned around to him with wide eyes, probably unbelieving what she was hearing. Hell, Edward himself didn’t even know what he was saying. She shook her head as if she didn’t understand. “But this is yours, in’nit?”

“Aye, t’is.” He nodded. “A fine place to call home, I agree. I even want me wife to see this place one day.”

She stilled to stone at that and her voice lowered. “Ya married, are ya?”

Edward’s skye blue eyes shifted to her. “In God’s eyes, I am, aye.”

There was a short pause where she said nothing. Instantly her demeanour grew quiet. “Ya ain’t tellin’ yer crew ‘bout it, do ye? Most o’ these men don’t follow one who has him higher commitments than rum an’ plunder.”

“Nay, where me commitments lie is none o’ their business.”

She tsked. “What of your democratic regiment?”

“About rum and plunder, aye.”

“You plundered this island from du Casse. Is yer crew in agreement with givin’ most of it to us assassins?”

Edward gave her a smirk but otherwise didn’t object much to it. “We’s on voyages most o’ the time, between Havana, Kingston and Nassau, as you well know. We won’t be missed here.”

Won’t he? She left the question unsaid when she neared him. She was shorter in height and before he knew her secret, Edward just blamed her being a boy not yet grown into his size. Why hadn’t it been a clue for what she was all along? Her face was covered in soot and coal under her bandana, but she smiled up to him before she patted him on the arm. “In the name of all the assassins here, thank you, Edward.”

It was the second time that day she thanked him.

.0.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, this is clearly an alternative timeline. The title is purposely named that way for this. In a different world, things would have gone differently. In fact, things would have gone MY WAY. 
> 
> Now I pretty much think the game was fantastic and I wouldn't have changed a fly to the storyline except for the ending, clearly. It just broke my heart and I need a happier ending with my OTP. Now I shifted a bit in the timeline as well as some characters in some scenes, because I figured you guys don't need to read a repeat of what happened in the game since you've already seen it. Slight adjustments there.
> 
> And I'm sorry, but I fell in love with Julien du Casse.


	2. What They Should Have Been

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was long overdue, I imagine. I do warn for the change of rating in this chapter. Without further ado I present to you 'What They Should Have Been.'

_Bahamas, Nassau, January 1717_

He was a known and thriving pirate now. Plundering ships became so easy, he only had to fly his colours and the privateers threw down them swords in surrender. He wasn’t the most feared pirate on the island though. No, his old friend Ed Thatch grew a thick beard and it became his mark. He would put on a crazy show of burning flint in his hair and under his impressive feathered hat, screaming like the devil and intimidating poorer sailor men to drop their defences.

It worked, for him and him crew were the riches lot in Nassau.

They were circled round a campfire they were, sharing a drink and speaking of raiding new plunder. Edward was the first one who took up the notion that he wanted to attack a fleet of ships, find the one with the biggest load and then sail free with its booty.

“Ye can’t expect we’s be able to run such a scheme, Kenway. As pirates we must be in and about, then out and vanished as fast as a gale on a hot day. An’ ambushing an entire fleet… nay, that’s impossible talk.” Ed Thatch had surprised to lot of them when he appeared to them with a long black beard hanging from his chin that was akin to a black flag, to hear him tell it.

“Not impossible, risqué!” Edward expected more from his own mentor. “And don’t think we do this on our own. There’s a lot o’ us who’s in want for his own galley to rob. We join our forces and take the fleet together.”

“Aye, I still say it’s yer folly talkin’, boy.”

“Mayhaps not.” James Kidd leaned lazily on the rock opposite of the fire. “About five-hundred men swear fealty to the Brethren of Nassau. Not a bad number. I’d wager at least half o’ those men would be willing to go on this voyage, if not more.”

See, there be a pirate queen sitting right there. Fearless as she was bold. She should know how much Edward appreciated her words. At least she believed in him, unlike him own tutor Ed Thatch and Adéwalé, who was sitting too quietly in his corner by the fire.

“I like the sound o’ that.” Edward handed her the bottle of rum he was drinking not a second ago as gratitude. Her eyes sparkled a wicked smile in the flickering light of the fire before she drank deeply from his bottle.

“It’s a quest that’ll get ya killed, is what it is.” Despite Thatch’s misgivens about the whole idea, he laughed loudly and drank deeply. “But if there be any devil on this green wide earth who can manage such a convoy, it’d be you, Kenway. I give ya me blessings.”

It sounded like Thatch wasn’t going to run along with Edward’s plan. That was too dark an idea to stomach. If there was anyone Edward wanted on his side if he went on this big a scheme, it was Thatch. “And what will you be doing then, when I was away to take that fleet?”

“Don’t you worry, lad, I have an ambush o’ me own planned. Even now me crew is out there gettin’ information ‘bout this bird not too far from ‘ere, nay. A real fussock she is. Dutch, fat an’ slow, aye.”

“And you say I speak mad. How you plan to raid a Man o’ War? Ye know better that those ships are always guarded by frigates and usually more o’ one.” No matter how seasoned a sailor, Thatch couldn’t survive that on his own. There aren’t many a lot of Man o’ Wars sailing these waters so up north of Cuba, but if Thatch did manage to know of one, the ship would be guarded by other heavily armoured ships. 

Thatch had a knowing smirk on his face, almost drunk he was, but sober enough to quietly convey his plan. “We’s just follow the bird from a safe distance until the other frigates sail up to the Americas. I have on good authority that three of its accompanying ships will veer off once the Man o’ War has reached the open water of the great ocean. I plan to struck then.”

“So far out in the open sea?”

“Aye. With not a soul else about, and we’s snailing in up from her stern, where aught else can she go? The amount of booty upon that ship is worth the trouble, mark me word.” Edward Thatch filled himself with liquor. “Whadda ya say, boy, you game?”

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Edward that Thatch would haul him over into this madness as well. He didn’t even ask properly, but knowing well enough that Edward wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to exploit a well-planned scheme. “Aye…” The blond searched for the eye of Adéwalé and when the man nodded once, Edward clanked his bottle to Thatch in a good deal well struck.

James Kidd pulled up and wiped sand from her behind. “Not me, I won’t. I’ve got some business to find by Cayman Sound.” The quick look she shared with Edward was enough to tell him that it was Assassin business. “I wish ye luck with yours, Thatch.”

The man grinned widely as Kidd left the circle of the fire behind and stalked off into the night. Adéwalé soon followed, finding that he’d like to share the rest of night in the company of the crew. Probably more to make sure they would be informed of the great voyage they were to take soon.

That left Edward with the older man who shared his namesake and was his tutor besides, as they exchanged tales of their travels around the fire for a time. It’s been quite a long time since they were alone together like this and the blond pirate was soon overrun with nostalgia. It has also been long since they raided ships together and this would be the first time Edward would go side to side as captain of him own brig. 

Edward raised his bottle to the plan. This deserved a toast. “May all the ships be filled with yellow coins and sparse cargo so we can plunder them dry. To life!” He cheered and drank. 

Blackbeard ended his loud laughter with a sigh. “Oh, but there’s more to life than gold and silver, mate.”

Edward doubted that. When he was younger he would’ve told you that adventures was all he sought in his life, but then it became apparent that without the gold or the silver, he would never be satisfied. It’s what he did for Caroline. “Fortune and leisure is what makes life worthy. And leisure isn’t affordable without fortune, so I disagree, me friend.”

Thatch shook his head and swallowed a large gulp of his drink. “Nay, Kenway, yous wrong ‘bout that. There’s to be more than just all the riches ye can carry, see if I’m not right. And yer be wise to remember that.”

.0.

_Bahamas, San Andreas Island, April 1717_

“Ah, look ‘ere Captain James Kidd. If it ain’t the most fearsome boy in the West-Indies. A mere _boy_ aye, but ten times bigger a devil than the late William Kidd ever was.” Edward quite enjoyed the cutting looks she gave him, whenever he emphasised on the gender part of his witty comment.

“Harr harr!” The men roasting a fish around a campfire cheered, despite not hearing the sarcasm in Kenway’s tone. “And soon to be the richest bloke of the West-Indies, I fancy. He’ll bring us riches from land as well as sea! Harr!”

Another cheer went around again but Edward was curious enough about their plans of new plunder. He send a look at Mary and gave her a signal with his eyes to move to a more secluded place. As assassin she knew the movements well enough and she followed him.

“Yer bringin’ yer crew riches from land as well as sea? Please, do tell what’s this about?” Is she robbing some gentleman drowned in gold and she isn’t telling him about it? “Ya not keepin’ secrets from me, do ya?”

There was a hidden smile in the corner of her mouth. “Not very well.” They both knew all her secrets by now. “And what makes ya think I’ll give up my spoils to you, Kenway?”

Ah, she doesn’t like sharing now does she? But it wouldn’t be the first time Edward had persuaded a woman to give something precious up to him. She may not be spilling her secrets to him now, but the treasure she harbours is far more valuable than any other treasure Edward had ever nicked of any lass.

“Come now, Kidd.” He circled around her, all the while smiling a grin that promised virility and excellence at all he did. She was covered from head to toe in her James Kidd guise, but he knew what lay hid beneath all the layers of James. “You and I both know them o’ ye crew ain’t capable of stealing anything on land.”

The expression on her face told him she didn’t believe he was any better either. “And _you_ are capable?”

“Aye, me is. If it’s on land yer takin’ yer plunder, I imagine there’s a question of slinking about a place. You think ye can barter on the leal men of ye crew to be silent… and efficient?”

Silent and efficient, eh? He parries his words well. “And t’is you I assume ye want me to take with me, hm? What is yer deary service gonna cost me?”

“Nothing more than a third of ya plunder and ye can have me and enjoy of me services for hours on end.” He kept a leer somehow from his countenance.

She sneered, not all too happy with his proposal but he had a point in all that, besides. It was indeed a mission on land and while she knew her crew would come in handy when on sea, she also knew they wouldn’t have the same skills as she has. As Edward also had. He could make for a legendary assassin, as Altaïr Ibn La’ahad and Ezio Auditore were before him, if he just tried. He could use his assets for so much more than just wasting it on thievery and pillaging. She believed he could _be_ so much more than a mere pirate, if only he could see it as well.

Even so, she had prepared herself for a messy night, but the booty would be rewarding. If she could complete this with the churlish and arrogant Edward Kenway, it would be less messy but just as rich in the end.

“You have a bargain if we go forward with your brig and you’ll get no less than half the plunder.”

No less than half? Must be a fine booty indeed if she was so generous with its sharing. “With the Jackdaw we’ll be then. So… where will this profit bring us?”

“Not all too far, Cat Island to be exact. There be a plantation with a warehouse, ungainly filled with chests and sugars and rum. We’ll keep the coins and sell the sugars for more coin. Mayhaps even the rum, if ye can fault yerself to keep you and yours off it.”

“Best o’ luck with that.” Edward knows his crew weren’t going to lay off the rum. They’re talking of mighty quantities of free liquor. It won’t last long enough to be sold off. Hell, even Edward would be one of the first to enjoy it.

Mary shrugged prettily. “The fat lordly lord who owns them plantation wouldn’t mind us a visit, I can imagine. He wouldn’t miss half of what we’ll might natty from him with all the large purses of coin he has hidden overseas.”

“Fat rich lord, you say? Exactly the kind o’ men I like to see robbed.” He’d be a gentleman of fortune soon enough, with all the riches for hisself.

.0.

After they shacked the whole warehouse, the lot of them returned to San Andreas. Kidd has her own ship to return to and Edward and him crew had some pre-celebration to attend, before they go all-out back in Nassau.

Three whole days Edward spend on Andreas Island drunk beyond measure. Three whole days where he did nothing but spend money on rum and whores and all in the good company of his crew. After which, he will set sails to Nassau, where he will most probably burn more coin to alcohol.

And women.

It wasn’t until the fourth day, where he woke up in a pile of hay and with a hangover the size of a man o’ war, that he lay his celebrating days behind him for now. He was roused by a crowd of people passing by. All of them rushing forward by the dozens, all seemingly excited for something Edward didn’t understand. His head hurt, his back hurt, in fact… everything hurts.

After picking himself up and the world turned dangerously in his head, he started to follow the line of people. Too curious to see what was going on despite the infernal headache that threatened to unbalance him. The sunlight hurt his eyes, but he kept them down and mingled with the mainstream down the town.

It took a moment for him to notice that the people of San Andreas seemed more elated than he had ever seen. Slaves and free folk mingled alike, smiling broadly and all speeding up the same spot wherever this queue would end. Children ran around in larger groups between the legs of the grownups and not one adult chastised them for doing so. The people of San Andreas were a mix of Africans, Spanish and British and its tongue has long since turned into a coarse breed of all three ethnicities. And yet there was no difference to the discernable joy they were all emitting at once.

But all that didn’t warn him for the miraculous event that he was about to witness when they reached the too-tiny market square that was too overcrowded. It was the sparkle of glitter in the air that made him focus what was happening right in front of him.

He couldn’t believe his eyes when he reached the square of the small market place. People were bend over, crawling over each other, trying to snatch the coins that was freely tossed to the ground for them to pick. And the one who was committing such an act of philanthropy was none other than Mary Read herself.

As James Kidd as always, there was a full chest of coin open behind her and she – along with two other men – were throwing the money into the air as if it was rain. Edward was literally shocked to stone as he watched and stared how Mary parted a chest of coin they had stolen with sweat and blood not three days before from the warehouse on Cat Island.

“Charity for all! Come, my friends.” She seemed exceedingly excited to give these people her hard-earned coins. “Silver! Gold! A gift to you, good people.” With this she threw another handful of coins into the air and the crowd cheered.

Edward stopped and felt his jaw slacken as he looked on at how Mary damn Read grabbed a fistful of yellow coins and threw them with a high arch in the sky. The sun reflected on them for half a heartbeat, where the coins turned to stars in daylight before they descended and disappeared between the people beneath.

The folk cheered with every tinkling coin that was being tossed and bended over as they were, Edward was the sore thumb that stood out between them as he wasn’t scratching for littering money. Mary’s eyes bee-lined for him own over the bended backs of the locals and she send him a sly smile that befitted a heathen.

What was wrong with her? Has she gone soft in the head? Why was she wasting the money into the air as if it were copper pennies instead of silver Pieces of Eight and golden Reales? Edward didn’t understand. He didn’t understand her or her motives, and all it did to him as he saw the golden money drop to the ground was give him rage. She continued her work as before, even though she had spotted Edward quickly enough.

He had once dreamed of doubloons spilling from his pockets like drops of rain once he returned home to Caroline from these West-Indies, but never had he dreamed that someone else would take such an expression quite literal. That coin could have been his, had Mary Read not been utterly daft. He circled the crowd until he reached the wooden platform she and her men stood upon and marched all the way up to face in a crossed mood.

Between clenched teeth he hissed besides her ear. “By what gods are you doing? Have you completely lost your marbles?”

Did wearing men’s boots cost her to lose her sanity? It was those hard pressed treasure they slipped from Cat Island she was handing out by the minute here. What in Jove’s name gave her the notion she should trinkle it about as if it were rain? He should have bargained for more than the half and put it to better use if he knew this is what she was planning with her share of the cut.

“I don’t imagine you lost sight in yer eyes. Should be obvious, in’nit?”

She was passing off all the money, that’s what she’s doing. “You give all yer bloody coin to these people for naught?”

She cut him a look which he recognized well enough by now. She’s to lecture him. “It’s not for naught, Edward. These people are in want for money more than you and I do.”

“Untrue. I have a mighty need for all me gold as well.”

She rolled her eyes away from him in a way that only she could and her tone turned sour. “And to do what with it? Spend it all on syphilis infested wenches to warm yer bed for a single night?”

Edward didn’t plunder and pillage just for the sake of prostitutes and rum. He had greater ambitions in mind, for when he returns home in Bristol. “I save me riches for meself.”

“Nay, Edward, don’t you see? Them are folk in need. Them who can’t afford a loaf o’ bread and starve when there is no coin to pay for ‘em.”

He remembered she hadn’t had much either in her past, to hear her tell it. From whatever little she did tell him, that was. He looked at her while she gave an old small lady a handful of yellow gold. “Coins for the needy.” She added, smiling warmly.

He was astonished by the kindness of her heart, he really was. But he couldn’t put himself to do what she does. All he wanted was as much gold for himself. “Is this what it means to be an assassin? Giving away to charity?”

The corner of her lips turned downwards and she slowly neared him. Arms crossed and scowling. “No. This is what it means to be a good man. To offer a hand you would want ‘nother to give you, should you find yerself in the same sort o’ predicament. I know what it was like and I much rather give it away for the poor than let it be pissed away on booze and whores.”

It was wrong to disagree with such a train of thought, he felt that it would. There was more to her than her strict duty to her assassin brotherhood, he could read that straight from her hazel eyes. And mayhaps, just mayhaps, it was a feat he completely admired.

.0.

_Cayman Islands, Grand Cayman, June 1717_

She had been on an assassination assignment for about a fortnight; this lowlife scum tried to smuggle gunpowder for major Templar orders around some West-Indie islands. She tailed him around to see if she could discover more Templar nests in her near location, but she got nothing more out of her stalking than new ways of smuggling.

Mary Read had found herself on Grand Cayman, where the Templar associate hid his not-so-secret smuggling den. She had to wait until the sun let down, for the village of Grand Cayman was man-made of wooden huts and harbour, with no trees or thick grown bushes to hide in. When it was dark she could climb over the rooftops unnoticed and the guards who held post were practically nightblind, thanks to the lantern they keep in front of them at all times.

She crept over the tops of the huts, praying to all gods that none of the wood would creak loud enough to earn her the attention of those guards, even though she was using silent step for stealth. She knew she had sneaked into a closed off area, for the guards were more often seen and she knew she was even closer to her target due to The Sense.

Her target wasn’t going to make it easy for her though, for he was always surrounded by a bunch of mercenaries. He was a smuggler and that meant he wasn’t stupid. He knew who the Templars were and that they had enemies – enemies he now shared. He made it a certain must in his life that he was always surrounded by hired guns and swords, lest one of those enemies were after his head. Which they were, of course. The very reason why she was here.

Since the man was always circled by his cronies, she had to carefully plan her strategy on how to kill him. She couldn’t simply assassinate him up close, for if she’s spotted, she wasn’t sure she could fight all these men in her lonesies. It may take a lot of waiting, which is all assassinations was anyway, but tonight that miserable shanker was going to die. That was a certain.

Timing was everything. Her mentor Ah Tabai taught her this. Assassination wasn’t just a skill, it was an art. It took time to perfect, it took time to utilize it. One shouldn’t rush into it. So she waited and followed and listened until the opportune moment. Her target took his party to the docks, where a small merchant ship was making port. Through the fire of the lanterns, she could see that her objection was meeting another man who stepped down the gangplank of said merchant ship. She couldn’t see exactly who he was, but she could only guess the newly arrived stranger was another Templar associate, by the looks of it. Who, in turn, also brought his own group of guards.

Now the lot of them guards had doubled of what they had been and Mary cursed her luck. She wouldn’t give up on her hunt though. There was no moon out tonight and that gave her the advantage of total darkness. And she wasn’t looking forward to tail him the rest of the month until she did find another chance to make her kill.

No, she had already decided that he would lose his life tonight and dying tonight he shall.

Despite the group growing twice in its size, she wasn’t discouraged and again she reminded herself that the perfect assassination takes time. So she waited and tried to plan herself an escape route might she find herself in the direct presence of those mercenaries, even if she was still very sure she was going to get away cleanly.

It wasn’t until she saw another figure creeping over the rooftop just like herself, that she started to feel concerns. Unlike the guards below, no light of a fire has caused her vision to be unused in the dark, and she has The Sense to make sure that there was indeed another person jumping over roofs like her. She decided that before she could act upon her target, she had to find out whether this intruder upon the rooftops was friendly or not.

Of course he was more a fool than he was friendly.

She crept up on him, using her silent step as she did so and tapped him on the shoulder when she was behind him. With a violent swing he whipped around, hidden blade engaged and ready to pull his cutlass from its sheath when his silver-blue eyes fell on her.

“Kidd! What the bloody hells are ye doin’ here?” He looked startled and it seemed like he wasn’t used to being sneaked upon. When he deactivated his hidden blades, they didn’t make a sound.

She doubted if his presence here meant he’d cock up her kill, but it was a small reconciliation that she had managed to surprise him from behind, and she smirked up at him. “I could ask ya the very same thing, Kenway. What makes you here?”

He looked her up and down, his gaze noticeably lingering around her chest area before his blue eyes – that looked more gray in the dark – met her own. “I think we’re on the same business here, mate.”

“What makes you think we’re on the same business?” She chuckled quietly. “You never think.”

“So you are not here to kill a man?”

“My target just met a man who came on that merchant ship. I suspect him is in with them Templars as well.” She cut him a sideways look. “And how did you get here? Where you left the Jackdaw?”

“The Jackdaw is in the good hands of Adé. I’m a stowaway on that merchant ship there.”

“That means your own target is-"

“Aye, him is.”

Their two respective targets had met up together.

That only meant that once again they had to work together to finish their missions. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve done so and as they started their hunt, it was odd to realize how in tune they were together, once they were silently stalking their prey from above.

Mary wasn’t sure if she could trust Edward not to cross her, with the way he went about an assassination. In the beginning the man had no discretion. He went in all pistols blazing and no subtlety. But she helped him change his ways with that; after she properly taught him how to use The Sense along with his blowpipe, his manner of assassinations swiftly changed. What was once a hot mess of him bumbling through his assassinations turned into pieces of art.

Their targets turned out to be brothers and moreover, they were identical twins. Edward and Mary nearly laughed at the jest of it, for that their targets to be twin brothers and brought double the trouble. The irony of it wasn’t lost on them and neither did the amount of hired swords that stood guard around the targets as well. 

Little did the Templar associates know that no matter the many mercenaries they kept about them, there were two highly skilled assassins on their trail and they would meet their end tonight.

.0.

As the twin brothers were born together on this world, that’s how they left from this world together. With each a knife through the heart at the same time.

As soon as Kidd and Kenway retrieved their hidden blades from the dead bodies, the situation escalated quickly. An alarm bell was raised, for they were seen by a gunner somewhere off. The bell rang and within seconds they were surrounded by two dozen brutish men and more were joining.

They had no time to consort with each other now that they found themselves in a hassle and their only way of escape was fighting their way to safety.

It became a bloody fight. Steel met naked steel under a starry sky and they danced for their lives in the dark. It was a hard battle and with a bell ringing off into the night, only more swords would add to their party.  
Mary felt the tip of someone’s blade sing past her side and as she slashed through her opponent oppose of her, she felt blood ink the front of her blouse, only hoping that it was enemy blood on her than her own. She passed a look over her shoulder lightning quick to see if the blond pirate was still faring well and the sight was a cruel beautiful slaughtering. The assassins of the brotherhood that she had seen in a fight were graceful and flowed through their movements as milky silk on a soft zephyr. Edward, on the other hand, seemed possessed by an animal; his moves were more lithe than graceful and the way he ended a man’s life was as uncouth as a jaguar devouring its prey.

Edward didn’t notice that he was being watched by more than only Mary, not until he saw the speared tip of a musket pointed in their way. Precisely in Mary’s direction, to be fact. He didn’t even got the time to call her name as warning. He tackled her off the pinpoint direction of the musket and shoved her to the side.

She didn’t know what was going on, too preoccupied with three brutes in front of her trying to spill open her guts with their axes. She heard Edward's footfalls run towards her, before he tackled her out of the way. She hit the ground hard, but not harder than the sound of Edward’s pain filled groan he emitted when a musket ball lodged itself in his left shoulder.

“Edward!”

She had hardly time to blink and Edward was clutching his bleeding shoulder. He was down on one knee, panting hard and practically defenceless. He had dropped his swords to still the blood spilling from his shoulder and they both knew his left hand was useless now. All this while their enemies were still circling around them.

She had no time to aid him while they were still in their current predicament, no matter how much she wanted to. If she didn’t fight off these men they would die in this little spot of a village in the middle of nowhere.

She had only one smoke bomb left and throwing it now would also affect Edward and he was already short on breath. She only hoped he could endure it when she exploded it on the ground. With the men coughing about her she easily took care of the remaining guard in a single kill streak.

Once she returned to the blond pirate, he was a crumpled, gasping mess kneeled to the floor.

“Honestly Kenway, I’d never thought a mere wound would stop you from continuing.”

When he did look up at her, he did so with an indignant glare in his eyes. Blood was also running down the bridge of his nose, where he had been cut right between the eyes. “Come off it, Kidd. This shot was meant for you.”

It was indeed meant for her and there were no words she could express – or _would_ express even if given the chance – how noble it was of him to catch that shot for her. She took his uninjured arm and hoisted him up. “A’right Kenway, let’s get ye cleaned up.”

He insisted that he didn’t need her help when she offered it to him, despite clearly withholding a groan with every step he took. To make the matter worse, they had to travel via roofs in order not to attract any more guards for the whole place was a restricted area. It meant that Edward had to use his injured arm or else he couldn’t climb.

Mary could read the pain right off his face every time he pulled his own weight up. She tried to aid him as much as she could and at least when they were climbing he let her lift him on top of the roofs. Unfortunately it was a big area that was being patrolled and he had to suffer through all of it. She only hoped that when they are jumping from hut roof to hut roof, Edward wasn’t leaking a trail of blood for any guard to notice and follow.

“Hang in there, Kenway. My ship is located a little off from the island. We’ll clean y’up.”

“Heh, you almost sound concerned for my well-being, Mary.” Despite his humorous tone, he grunted lowly. Probably not to let her hear that he was in pain, but she has been shot as well before and she knew it was hell.

“I wouldn’t have saved your puny arse so many times if I wasn’t.” When they finally reached the shore out of the way of the restricted area, it was Mary who took the oars of the rowboat and quietly rowed them to her brig, where it was anchored in the darkness. Edward couldn’t move one of his arms to row, if he will be able to move it for the next few days at all.

“Bring me fresh water.” She ordered her men around as soon as she put foot on deck. Guiding Edward to her cabin, she gave a heading towards her First Mate. The quartermaster and boatson would take care of the rest. “Also a bottle o’ rum and the cook’s skinning dagger.”

One of the sailors looked at her odd. “Skinning dagger, capitán?”

She nodded. “Aye, ye heard me. And be quick about it, don’t ya be loitering around. Go get it.”

By the time Edward limped into her cabin, he already lost a lot of blood. He looked pale despite being sun-burned and tired even though they haven’t exerted themselves too much.  
Without any given invitation, Edward dropped on the small hard bunk in the corner of the cabin, too exhausted to pay any heed to any details of Captain Kidd’s private cabin.

Mary let him, knowing that it was his wound that made him lose his edge. “You should take off your robes.”

Edward slid his blue orbs towards her and managed to let weak grin appear on his lips. “Why, Lady Mary, if you wanted me naked as retribution, all you had to do was ask sooner.”

She rolled her eyes. It was quite a feat that he still found some humour in his current situation, seeing how he was weakened to a wet cloth with all that lack of blood and surely the pain that coursed through him with every movement he made. “I can’t get your wound cleaned otherwise, you lobcock.” She paused for a moment, remembering this wasn’t the first time he called her like that. “And I’m not a lady.”

Edward chuckled but did as she told him. With lots of groaning he unbuttoned and loosened straps of his robes. His weapons were the first to go off; pistols, cutlasses and his much beloved hidden blades were dropped on a nearby drawing-table. He slithered out of his leather vests, but the problem arose when he needed to take off his robes he grabbed from Duncan Walpole.

He looked at Mary miserably, already panting just by struggling off his clothes. She sighed, but seemed pleased enough to help him undress as if he was a child. He could read right off her expression that she was about to present him with one of her famous snarks. “Don’t ya say a word.”

“I don’t said anything, Kenway.”

His white blouse underneath had discoloured to a brown rusty colour of all the drying blood. He slipped the thing over his head and threw it on the ground.

She eyed him while he was seated on her bed. He was naked till the waist and his entire left arm was caked with dirty blood. His wound was still slowly oozing more blood. Her gaze lingered on the tattoos that covered most of his skin, as well as the obvious bulge of muscles of his upper body, until there was a knock on her cabin door and a sailor had brought her the supplies she asked for.

Edward only saw the sharp point of the skinning dagger when she took it from the sailor and his eyes grew big. “What’cha planning to do with that knife, lass?”

Was it a must for him to call her that? She sighed, putting everything aside except for the skinning knife. “Ye don’t expect to keep that leaden ball inside there, do ya?”

Knowing him, he was. “I don’t want to.”

“Don’t be a ninny.” She didn’t like the next part that was coming to him, no more than he certainly would.

He groaned. “This is going to hurt, won’t it?”

She kept her face expressionless. “Aye. So bite on this.” She handed him the wooden bit and with a pouting look he put it between his teeth.

Mary uncorked the rum bottle and let a few drops drip over both sides of the skinning dagger. Its point was curved and threatening, promising a load of pain she no doubt knew he would feel, but it would get the job done. She had not yet touched the knife to his skin and he whimpered like a beaten dog.

He pulled the wooden piece from his mouth. “Ye do know what ya doin’?”

She saw the apprehension in his blue eyes as he had every right to be. “Nay, but I ‘ave seen it done before. And we need to get ‘em ball out or end up losin’ the entire arm.”

He nodded, took a breath and braced himself. She took the dagger to his wound and needless to say, it was not a pretty sight.

Once the bloody malformed leaden ball dropped to the floor, Edward was a sweaty panting mess. She cleaned the wound by pouring more rum over it before wrapping it in linen. By the time she was done, he was half conscious and quickly slipping out of it. He had lost even more blood while she was working to get that bullet out and she was surprised that he was still awake through all of it.

She was cleaning the remaining blood off his arm when he decided to lie flat on the bed. He was breathing lowly and his eyes were drowsy, but he managed to stay awake and smiled lopsidedly at her. “Ye gonna nurse me back to health?”

“You keep thinkin’ that.” For a reason she kept her voice low. He seemed to be about to pass out and it will only do him good if he did. “I ain’t yer mum.”

His eyes drooped and she was so sure that his lights were going out, but he mentally shook himself awake it seems. He shuddered and blinked a few time. “I s’pose not. Me mam… me mam knows how to heal sheep.”

She chuckled to herself. “Sheep?”

He nodded lazily, his eyes falling shut again. “They are sheep – sheepherders.” He sighed as if he was out of breath. “Me mum, she keeps watch when one o’ them sheep were ill.”

This was information she never knew about him. His parents were sheepherders?

By now he was talking to her with his eyes closed. “Me father would be… would be up for the night as well to keep her company. Connected at the hip, they were.”

She had no idea what to say. “That’s a fine thing to be.”

He continued as if she didn’t talk at all. “Their names… they were Bernard and, and Linette. Me mum used to watch over me too-“ He drowsed off a little. “-when I was ill. I think. Me father would… would join her. Always. Always together they were. Always, in love.”

That sounded just about as lovely as anything she had ever heard. “Do you miss them?”

Edward said nothing. It stayed silent for quite some time and she thought he fainted completely, but he managed to answer her still, if not quietly. “No.”

He didn’t miss his parents? He _had_ parents and he didn’t miss them? Mary envied him. If only she still had her own; granted she didn’t even know who her father is for certain and she certainly never met him, but if she could get her mother and brother back, she would. She would leave the lot of this piracy behind if she could have them back. And apparently Edward left his own family for the pirate life.

She shook her head. The man got it all wrong.

A minute later she heard Edward’s breathing change and she knew he was finally out of it. She grabbed his bloodied blouse when she quit the cabin. She’ll let one of the younger boys rinse the blood out.

But tonight, she’d share a hanger with her crew mates.

.0.

Edward woke up in a cabin he had never seen before. He knew he was on a ship though and by the feel of it they were anchored, but he couldn’t be all too sure. His head felt heavy and his vision was blurry at first, but when he blinked a few times the world stilled. He moved his fingers and his toes and all seemed to be working correctly, but everything ached. He moved to sit up, groaned like a cow being milked when a stab of pain cut through the entirety of his left arm.

He got shot, he vaguely recalled and if the linen wrappings were any indication, everything wasn’t just a dream.

“Well, a fine good morrow to you, Kenway.”

He slowly looked to his side, where the female pirate assassin was leaning on a wooden chair.

“Mary…” Of course. She was with him before he lost consciousness. “How long have I been out?”

She was, as ever, dressed as James Kidd. “No less than a day. Lost a lotta blood yester night. Got yerself a good sleep, did ya?”

He grunted.

She chuckled. “Ye hoarded me bed, that’s what ye did. You better ‘ave slept like a newborn babe.”

“If being passed out counts as sleeping, then aye.” He tried to roll his injured shoulder but all he felt was pain as if he was being shot all over again.

She rose from her seat and neared his wound. It hurt when she touched it, but Edward bit through it. “Lemme clean that ‘fore you go.”

“Go? Where to?” He asked.

She peeled off the stained linen from his shoulder. “We’re anchored starboard to port with yer Jackdaw. Found her just this morn we did, conveniently dobbering just out of the restricted area.”

“Adé knows I was on a contract. He keeps Jackdaw circling around.”

She nodded, suddenly pulling up from his wound and hovering a waterpot above his arm. He flinched away before she was able to spill any over his open wound. “And what’s in there?”

She glanced at the pot then back at him. “Seawater.” She said innocently enough, but seawater was salty and would prick just as worse as the rum she poured over his wound the day before.

And it would be the first time he ever heard a doctor prescribing seawater to clean any wound. “Why ye don’t use tar to close the wound immediately?” This way is just going to ache forever.

She rolled her eyes. “Tar would only make it worse. Listen, this is a remedy I learned from the assassins at Tulum.” Edward eyed it with disdain. “Trust me, will ya?”

His blue orbs slid to her. He could trust her. Hell, he reckoned that besides Thatch and Adé, she was one of the few he would trust blindly with his life.

“T’is gonna hurt again, aye?”

She said nothing but smiled when she poured the water over his wound. It hurt, like her smile promised it would, but not as much as it did the day before with the rum. “At least ye aren’t delirious like last night, with you rambling on.”

He was talking to her? He couldn’t even remember that. He recalled the pain when she exerted the bullet out of his wound and the sting when she cleaned said wound. After that everything turned fuzzy. “Did I? What did I say?”

She shrugged. “About yer past, s’all.”

He froze. His past? He didn’t even like talking about his life prior to piracy. He didn’t mention… Caroline, did he? “Such as?”

“Yer parents, mostly. It sounded like ye didn’t want to be sheepherders like yer ol’ folk.”

She thought that he would take the jest about his ramblings as he always did, with an arrogant smirk and a glitter in his sapphire blue eyes, but she was having none of those. His lips were pressed into a thin line and he kept his gaze downcast, refusing to meet hers.

“No.” Was the only thing he said in response to her before a quietness settled over it. She didn’t like it though. There was never an uncomfortable silence around Edward Kenway.

He was deep in thoughts for quite some time while she rinsed and washed his old linen that covered shoulder in the quiet air that hung around them. Until it occurred to him that she was tended to his wounds and she didn’t have to, yet she was and he was giving her silence. She was a clever woman, wasn’t she? Smarter than him by far. So why was she the one always looking after him?

“Why all this concern?” He asked her out of the blue, more from shock of gratitude than curiosity.

It didn’t begin here though. She saved his arse by talking Ah Tabai and the rest of the assassins out from killing him for what he did in Cuba. She properly taught him how to use this Sense he had all his life, explaining what it is and what for. She was the one who handed him the blowpipe to aid him too. She saved his life a few times over as well as inviting him to the ways of the assassin that was so sacred to her.

And he wondered the why of it all. What gave her the reason to help the likes of him? It surely wasn’t the notion of Ah Tabai or the other assassins, who rather would want to see him dead than anything else. Then why did Mary Read go through all this trouble for _him_? Was it all just a ploy to recruit him for the assassin’s brotherhood? Was that the reason why she did all this for him?

She looked up from his shoulder to him. “Ye wanted me to leave ye bleedin’ to death?”

“Nay, ‘course not. Yet here ya are, nursing me to health.”

She tsked. He probably didn’t remember saying the same thing the night before. “I won’t, you cully. Now keep still.” She wrapped fresh linen around his wound, while he tried not to get lost on the feel of her fingers ghosting over his skin.

He was seated on her bunk while she looked after his shoulder. She was a bit too close for comfort and when he met her eyes, she stilled. He remembered that she still hadn’t answered his question before, only responded with another question. He’d have his answer from her, he would. “You saved me more than once. I ask again, why?”

She shrugged as if it were no hard question and the answer to such was easy. “Because I know there’s a man in ye somewhere worth savin’.”

“Saving for what?”

She didn’t answer him, at least not immediately. She completely washed his shoulder and his arm besides. He let it hang limp in her hands while her slender fingers brushed over his skin. She wiped the old crusted blood off from the day before, once again in silence. When she was done, she still hadn’t answered him. Instead she threw him his blouse he was wearing underneath, its colour somewhat returned to the white it used to be. She managed to rinse the blood out. Even that she did for him and he should be rightly grateful to her.

When he was dressed, she gave his right arm – his good arm – a pat. “I saved ye because you’ll do good in the future, Edward. A great many a things. I know you will.”

.0.

_Jamaica, Kingston, September 1717_

The only time Mary Read had ever feared for her life was when she was in Kingston helping Antó with the Bureau attacks. She had long since committed herself to the assassins and if she had to sacrifice her life in order to secure the survivals of more assassins, she would do so.

It didn’t make it any easier when she was in the heat of battle and she was surrounded by so many British soldiers, she was certain her short time on this world would end that night.

A bullet had nicked her arm and she had felt several kisses of different cutlasses upon her body within minutes. No matter how much she fought or run or parried, the soldiers never seem to end. Rhona Dinsmore had screamed something offensive at the men behind her, Mary remembered. It was dark, with a slither of a nail-curving moon in the sky and she couldn’t count how many more men there were to be defeated.

It was the first time that Mary dreaded the outcome of the situation. She saw that Antó’s robes were darkened by blood and by the slowing manner of his fighting only meant that he was wounded. Rhona, as ever, kept up her own part of the deal as she fought off the British soldiers, but she too had felt the cold kisses of the steel blades around her and there was a nasty cut that opened her arm from wrist to elbow. The other assassins were send away on orders of Antó and escape, while the three of them distracted and got rid of the soldiers.

Templars had send these hired swords to get rid of the Bureaus and the assassins, and just on time Mary and Rhona both got to Kingston to prevent the ambush from happening by a letter send from Ah Tabai. As far as they knew, Opía Apitó and Upton Travers were also given the orders to head towards Kingston and aid Antó, but of each Assassin associate they heard nothing.

Had they been all together, this fight would have been dealt with by now, but with only three of them against a few dozen British mercenaries made the odds more in the Templar’s favour than in their own.

Such as it was when they were fighting for their lives, when a random group of drunken sailors stumbled to their party, shouting infinities and trying to hold up some of the British soldiers by brawling with them. Half of them got caught by the bawdy tipplers, the other half still tried to cut down the three assassins who they were meant to kill.

Roles were reversed when the devil of the West-Indies himself dropped down from the trees, double killing two soldiers when he did so. Mary had just finished off a soldier and she saw him, a shadow among the men, his robes as black as the night and his hidden blades flicked out from its compartment, already covered in warm blood.

Between the chaos that was around them with Rhona and Antó in dire need of aid, Edward Kenway still managed to turn to Mary with a grin on his face and a cheeky glint in his eye.

“Need help, m’lady?”

The very endearing caused her to set off. A soldier was running up behind Edward, ready to cut Kenway from behind, and Mary shoved her cutlass pass the pirate’s ear, stabbing the Brit in the face. She didn’t know how many times she had to tell him that she wasn’t a lady. “Not a word!”

Unlike her, who wasn’t ambidextrously gifted as he was, Edward pulled out two rapiers from their sheaths to cause more havoc and death to his enemies. He made his way around to Rhona, whose shock to see him there nearly got herself cut from nose to naval. “Kenway? Whot makes yeh ‘ere?!”

Mary spun off to team up with Antó and deal with the tyro Brits of him own. The man was a silent nightmare; tall, dark, deathly and one who doesn’t speak too many words. He quickly grabbed a handful of smoke bombs and exploded them on the ground. All three assassins plus pirate took it as a clean getaway and they took to higher ground to leave the lot of their pursuers behind them.

Once the lot of them managed to escape any of the British soldiers, Rhona let out a thirsty laugh. Mary joined her well enough, while Rhona clapped Antó on the shoulder. “I imagine yeh’d be cleared now from those pesky soldiers sniffing about!”

Antó was a big man and Rhona had to nearly jump a foot into the air just to manage the friendly shoulder pat she gave him. The man grinned widely, something both Mary and Rhona knew he scarcely did. Antó was a stoic and was very dedicated to the brotherhood, but they barely escaped with their lives today and that was reason enough for a smile.

Rhona leaned on Mary and sighed in a way that clearly said it was good to be alive. The two shared a laugh as if they were innocent maidens and not as if they just cut their way through British soldiers, just for the sake of laughing. Tonight was as close to fearing for her life as Mary has ever come and she was more than fine to let out a breath of relief with Rhona Dinsmore.

Until Rhona turned around to the Welsh pirate. “Ah, Edward!” Rhona practically ran over to Edward and hugged him around neck. “I don’t kno’ where we’d be if yeh blond head didn’t appear when yeh did! I’ll be buggered for these words but, yeh saved us!”

Edward chuckled, not shy at all to slither his arm around Rhona’s middle in return. The corner of his lips lifted in his typical conceited way which made him think he was all charming.

He wasn’t.

“Anything for a lady.” He looked quite pleased with himself as he let go of Rhona Dinsmore and behind them Mary crossed her arms.

“Even I am quite astonished with your actions today, Welsh man.” Antó bowed his head in gratitude.

“It’s nothin’ to mention about.” Even if his words were humble, his tone sounded pompous. “And the name’s Edward.”

Antó nodded. “I’d do well to remember it this time.” He also told Rhona that he would look after the Bureau’s department before they’d be found again.

When Antó slipped away, Edward pushed the hood from his head. “Department? You assassins going somewhere?”

“Not for long.” Rhona answered. “After yeh handed these sensitive documents over to ‘em Templar muckworms, they know of our exact location and we can’t keep hid away for long.”

Edward looked over at Mary, who practised a blank expression at the two of them. “Did you not hand over the location of The Cove to her as well?”

He had asked Kidd but it was Miss Dinsmore who answered. “Sure she did, mate and it’s a kind thing to offer but we’s s’ppose to keep spread round these West-Indies too, yeh kno’? Templars ain’t gonna keep still and neither oughtta we.”

She had the right of it, of course. Rhona breathed another sigh of relief, just to feel her body breathe. For people who move in shadows and work with death, they have the highest regard for life, these assassins. She barely noticed the gaping cut she had on her arm when she hugged Edward once more, only held a hand over it later to stall the bleeding. She left quite soon to go and tend to it as well.

Edward’s gray-silver gaze fell on James Kidd. “And then that leaves only you.”

Mary kicked at the sand with her toes. “Only me, aye? You seemed to have it cosy with Dinsmore over there.”

She was putting a tone with him that he hadn’t heard from her before. But he had been around women enough – a fairly long time by now – to recognize such tone when he hears it. “Is that some greenery I hear there, Lady Mary?”

“Keep wishing that twaddle, Kenway.” And she had told him for the umpteenth time, “And I’m no lady.”

His eyes glanced her from head to heel. “Indeed you are not.”

She didn’t like the look he gave her and she most definitely didn’t like the shivers that ran down her back that his gaze accumulated. She nodded and brushed both his comment and his eyes off her.

Edward didn’t know if he liked what she did. 

Mary nonchalantly turned from him and wiped the Jamaican blood off her blade that she gathered from the fight. “And where did ye come from, I wonder, just in nick o' time to save the day?”

Edward’s smirk was cheeky when he shuffled closer to her. “I saved ye, did I?”

“Rhona and Antó were in great need of some aid, aye.” She fingered her hidden blade. “I had the situation under control, if I do say so meself.”

You’d think a lady would be more grateful that he saved her and the rest of the assassins besides. However, as she kept telling him on every occasion, she wasn’t a lady. He would have tried to charm her by now if she was a proper lady, but if he liked anything in this stubborn woman was that she was unlike anyone else he had ever met. She dressed like a man, and that took a load of courage to do so, but she was an assassin as well who believed in this creed. She was brave and she was smart and strong, and it was no wonder she claimed not to be a proper lady. He may not be tempted by this creed she so strongly believe in, but he was tempted by her.

He took a step towards her, a smirk on his face of pissfull confidence. “Is that a way to thank yer savior? Miss Rhona Dinsmore seem to have the right of it.”

Her hazel eyes narrowed and her lips curved downwards. The same lips she coloured red with her blood less than a year ago. “Was it good for you as well?”

“I imagine it could be better.”

With his philander reputation, she wouldn’t be surprised. But his follies with whichever woman was not her own. Trying as she might, Edward Kenway shot to their aid when they needed it. She wouldn’t say that he saved her as if she was some distressing damsel, as much as he’d enjoy that she knew, but she wasn’t the kind of person to not repay a debt.

She eased into a smile. “Ne’er the less, thank ye for helpin’ us out back there.” She patted him on the arm, as she usually did.

It wouldn’t be the first time Edward acted rash, but there was a certainty in him that told him he should have done this sooner. He grabbed her wrist in return before she was done with her trademark pat on his arm. “For once I want something else other than a pat on the arm as thanks.”        

She looked at him from under her bandana. “I got no gold to offer ye right now.”

“I wasn’t talkin’ of gold.”

“Aye? Like whot then?”

His azure gaze flicked to her mouth then back at her. She caught the meaning behind his look well enough and took no less than a second to try and escape from him. “Edward, no.”

There was a grin on his face; one of his devious mischief promising grins he adopted all too often. “An’ why not?”

“We’re out in the open. We could be seen!”

Despite her protest she didn’t object to the actual deed of it. Only that they were in public and doing so would bring dire consequences should they get caught. Her words said no but her eyes begged to differ and Edward will take shamelessly advantage of that. His mother always said that he had a fancy way with birdies and it wouldn’t be the first time he enticed a woman to bend to his will. Literally.

And Mary Read, dressed as a man she may be, called herself like a man as she did, is still a woman at the end of the day.

A woman he may have had a special interest to since the day he saw her naked under that waterfall in Tulum.

“No.” She said firmly again and pulled away from him but she forgot he still held her at the wrist and he pulled her swiftly back.

She send a glare up at him and yet she stood on her toes to reach him all the same. Neither one could say who kissed who first, for they reached for each other’s lips simultaneously.

Her mouth was sweet and her waist was slim when he curled an arm around her, the latter of which he knew how slender she was since their encounter at the waterfall.

He had not yet fully enjoyed her kiss, let alone deepened it to his satisfaction when she pushed him away. “Ah, get off, Kenway. You smell like yer been months at sea!”

He was a pirate captain coming back to land after prowling the seas for weeks, she wasn’t wrong in that.

Mary wrinkled her nose. “See that ye never do that again.” She referred to him kissing her, to be sure, even if she hadn’t protested too much when he did and she returned the gesture as eagerly as he had given it.

Edward shrugged a shoulder aloofly, knowing that this would only be the first of many more kisses to come. “Can’t promise ya I will.”

She flashed her hidden blade at him, but the threat was broken when she winked at him before she left him to himself. He stared after her as she floated away, moving more so like a woman with a sway to her hips than the swagger of a man.

.0.

It wasn’t until a month later that she saw him again. She had passed by San Inagua and intended to work along with her mentor for quite some time, but Ah Tabai send her back with a contract that brought her to Nassau.

She had to meet an informant as soon as she landed in Nassau to make quick work of her target. And instead of meeting somewhere off in the shadows as was the way of the assassins, she was to be approached in The Old Avery tavern. To hide in plain sight was one of the lessons Ah Tabai taught her and there was nothing more inconspicuous of two men sharing a talk over a drink.

All the familiar vessels she had known over the years were anchored near or about the docks. There they were; The Ranger, as dirty a squat as its captain. The Revenge, as neat a vessel as Mary had ever seen, with sails lined of yellow silk. And also The Benjamin and Queen Anne’s Revenge, which was the biggest ship of the whole port. And there was the Jackdaw, with a bird as figure head and freshly painted besides. Some of the lanterns on board were lit, no doubt Edward put a few of him crew on guard duty.

She wondered if he would interrupt her mission as he made it a habit to do for quite some time now.

Fortunately for Mary she met Edward at the top of his game; well in his cups and drunk enough to be spending money on whores who flittered around him and treating merry men on the best rum tankard the tavern got to offer.

Anne Bonny was the first to cheer for Mary when she put a foot inside the tavern. No one else heard Anne’s cheers, but Mary blessed the anonymity nonetheless.

“Ya want a bottle of rum for ye there, Kidd?” Anne yelled out, pointing at her.

James shook her head no but Anne only gave her a wave that said Kidd shouldn’t be so silly, before she headed off to wait upon another man.

Mary hadn’t put two steps into the place and she heard the loud laughter of several familiar men, not two tables away from her. She saw Kenway first, raising a bottle to his lips. He was drunk beyond measure. They all were; Edward Thatch, Charles Vane, even Ben Hornigold and gentle Master Bonnet. And Jack Rackham, but he was always drunk. They were seated together at a table, laughing so hard, the musicians were barely heard. Calico Jack was telling one of his famous tales; one that bedazzled the men and made the women swoon. The man had a queer aversion for drama and comedy, and though always chafed on either smoke or alcohol – or both – he was a good storyteller.

Tavern wenches crawling about and finding their way betwixt the Gentlemen of Fortune, as they liked to call themselves. Two girls were seated, one on each knee of Rackham and Vane was openly fondling the breast of a fair haired lass. Stede Bonnet, pink in the cheeks, kept refusing any betty that offered to accompany him in this merry band, yet he eagerly stared as a shy hungry dog at Charles Vane and his own wench. There was a dark haired mopsie in a red silken dress sitting on Kenway’s own lap and another dark-skinned beauty wrapping her arms around his neck. Edward Kenway was more drunkenly laughing along to whatever jest that has been told, as he choked down a whole bottle in nearly a single gulp, than lavishing his attention to the women.

It didn’t matter in what state he was in or with who he was with. Mary rolled her eyes away with a sneer. She only came here to meet her informant about a certain target of her.

Drunk as he was, there was something that told Edward he had to look up, and when he did, it was no one other than the ever elusive James Kidd who had walked inside the crowded tavern. Edward left no second more pass by as he excused himself from the others, not sure if they had heard him at all, seeing how pissed from drink they were.

“Ahoy, Kidd.” His legs wobbled towards her, stinking of ale and probably stained with rum. It was a miracle he could stand on him own three feet. Or was it one foot too many? “Ye missed quite a time, here.”

“Aye,” She said with a deadpan tone. “Pity I can’t join ye canopy o’ mates there.”

“I don’ see why not.” He buckled about, took hold of her shoulder to steer her back to the rough group of pirates.

She clapped his arm off of her, shrugging as she did so. “I’m not here for leisure, Kenway.”

Edward blinked wearily. It took him a second or two to realize she was here as an assassin and not as a pirate. “Ah, come now Kidd. Don’t tell me yous can’t make a bit o’ time to take a drink with us. We’s self-made men, we do what we please, whenever we want, with whoever we desire.”

She didn’t doubt that was the code he lived by, as she looked back at the women waiting for his return and the drink that passed from hand to hand between the men. She wouldn’t be prevailed.

As soon as she told Edward that she wasn’t here to get shit-faced drunk along with him, he backed off and continued on his jolly way with the rest of the infamous pirate gang. She hadn’t had time for any of those men or women for that matter, but Anne Bonny lacked to see that James Kidd was on formal business.

Sometimes Mary felt torn between three personas; either she was James Kidd or Mary Read and an assassin in between, and she swore each time she was one more than the other.

“Get yer arse from that stool lad, ‘fore I kick the likes of ye off!” The Irish lass had a sharp tongue and even sharper attitude. There was no man in the tavern that didn’t somewhat fear the redheaded windstorm.

The chap scrambled from the stool right next to Mary’s to make room for the sassy tavern wench. Anne giggled quite satisfied and slammed down a mug of mead. “Been long a while since we’s had a nice chat, like, you and I.” Anne pushed mead to Kidd, who in turn declined the drink.

It was James Kidd Anne was talking to and it was James Kidd who answered the lass with a sideways smirk. “Miss me now, did ye?”

Anne gave James a sly eye. The twinkle in there was clear to Mary as it was to James Kidd. She had been between men long enough to know what it meant when a woman looked at a lad like that. The young Missy Anne Bonny didn’t know the true face behind James Kidd yet and mayhaps it was ripe time that she did.

Anne’s red lips curved flirtatiously into a smile. “More than ye think. A fresh breath o’ air ye are, ‘twixt these scallywags.” She pointed at Hornigold and the likes. “I do see littler and littler of ye these days.”

Mary swore to right that. She liked Anne; the woman was bold, witty, ferocious in her own way and she neither had to pretend to be anything else than herself to be somewhat accepted by society. She was Anne Bonny and you either took her as she was or piss off.

A man sat down next to James Kidd and quietly ordered a cup of barley water. Anne was still talking to her, but the man’s off order piqued Mary’s interest. No man nor woman visiting a tavern came to drink a puny drink as barley water. Her Senses told her he was the man she came here for and when the man shifted, he drew the invisible outline of the Brotherhood sign upon the wooden countertop.

It was indeed him. He left the tavern again before his drink had even arrived and it was up to James Kidd to bid adieu to Anne Bonny. When Kidd told the Irish lassie he had to leave, there was clear disappointment in her eyes to see James Kidd go.

“Meet me here precisely midday on the morrow.” James Kidd told Anne with a wink. “I’ve got something to show ye that’ll spin yer head right round.”

Anne nearly swooned. “Oh, I’ll be right ‘ere.” 

.0.

Outside, her informant told her that the Templar on her contract would appear no later than an hour on the most west-ward beach of Nassau, trying to smuggle gunpowder into ships. She would be send to intervene the smuggling line with the Templar’s death, as was her mission.

An easy kill it would be indeed, until a Welsh pirate decided to stumble out of the tavern and after her.

“Oi, Kidd. Hold ye horses, wait up man!”

She didn’t know if she should be annoyed that he was making such a ruckus or at least satisfied with the fact that he didn’t address her as a lass.

“Jaysus, Edward, what ye doin’ here?”

He pointed a big finger to her chest. “An’ what are _ya_ doin’ ‘ere?!” He grinned stupidly, swaying a bit on his feet but he otherwise remained standing.

Mary scoffed. She had no time to deal with him, even less in the state he was in. What made him follow her anyway? “I’ve got a Templar to get rid of.”

He nodded unevenly. “I’m comin’ too.”

“What? No!” Absolutely not. With the way he was now, he would only cock up her kill as he was wont to do. 

As soon as she denied him the invitation, his face twisted like into a chastised child. “Why not?”

“Yer drunk. I ain’t taking you anywhere while yer deep in yer cups like that.”

He snorted, waving away her words with a hand. “Birdshite. I once infiltrated a British fort after drowning in a cargo of ale.”

She didn’t doubt that he has. Nevertheless, she wasn’t going to bring him along on her assassination hunt. He’s drunk and even without the alcohol he was rash and a senseless git. He would only muck up her mission. “No.”

“I’m still coming.”

“Dammit, Kenway. Why? Ain’t ya got somethin’ better to do with yer time? I saw them two wenches back in the tavern quite merry to be on yer lap.”

Edward shot her a lopsided grin. “Don’t tell me ya wanted me to save ye a spot on me lap as well, Mary?”

She punched him on the arm for that before looking about them to see whether or not someone had overheard him calling her real name. “Put a cork on it before I shut it for you!”

He smiled because for some reason her vexation was his amusement. “And in which way are ye planning to shut me up, lass?”

She glared at him. “Ye are drunk, Edward. Go find yourself a bed to lie low in before you screw up ‘round here, aye?”

“Best not. Remember what happened last time when yer Bureau got attacked?” He said truculently.

He had to save her ass and she was none too pleased to be reminded of that. It still pricked her pride knowing that of all scoundrels to be saved by, it had to be him. “All too well. Fortunately, I ain’t here for any Bureau attack. I’m on a contract, which I can handle on meself well 'nough, so you can best be gone.”

He didn’t leave her and what had to turn out as a simple assassination mission turned into her looking after Edward as he drunkenly stumbled after her. At the very least, he was silent when she required stealth, but as they were hiding in the bushes and she was following her target, she could feel Edward’s hands creep up on her where they shouldn’t be.

“Quit that!” She whisper-screeched and she elbowed him behind her.

He groaned but did as was told him.

They found themselves on the much quiet side of Nassau, where the taverns and brothels were scarce. It was indeed a perfect place to run whatever secrets a man may have. And just like her informant told her, her target was at its appropriate place. What was more a surprise however that her target was alone.

There were no guards to be found, no hired swords or mercenaries. It was the easiest kill, which turned out to be the most painful.

Her target was a woman. Mary had heard of her in passing but she never would have thought that she would ever meet the Chinese pirate empress so far in the West-Indies, yet she was here and clutching a severe wound after Mary stabbed her.

Edward was – once again - taken aback that she was a woman in the first place.

“I always thought that it would be a man that would bring me down.” Jing Lang spurted up blood. “I guess it’s my irony that I’d die by the hands of a woman.”

“I do not wish this as much as ye do, mate.” Mary answered with a sad look. There are not many women who are brave enough to face the high seas and if they do, certainly not dressed to their gender. Jing Lang was a rare and extraordinary sight, even to Mary Read. “But you chose yer own fate when ya decided to work for Templars.”

“They simply managed to aid me first.” Jing Lang confessed as the white around her seem to make time stand still. “I was a ruined woman when I reached Madagascar. But then I was approached by a man with the red crossed ring that promised me to put me back on the helm of a ship, if only I serve him here in these new colonies. Seems a fair deal.”

It turned out Jing Lang desired more to live her life as a seafarer than a Templar. “Did you care for their cause?”

“None at all.” A bloody smile curved on Jing Lang’s lips. “I heard of the Assassin’s creed and I never denied it being true. But it were not the assassins who came to my help when I was reduced to nothing.”

Edward stepped forward, seemingly still edgy of the drink. “If the assassins offered you more gold, would you have turned yer word against the Templars?”

Jing Lang blinked warily, trying to catch her last breath. “No.” That was how she died, with blood bubbling from her lips, her straight hair sprawled over the sand and her dark eyes gazing unflinching into the sky.

Edward snorted. “She was a bloody Templar to the bone.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Guess she deserved that blade through the ribs.”

Mary gave him a scolding look. “That’s not how we work, Kenway. We honour even their presence, as humans, as men, even if their cause do not agree with ours.” She closed Jing Lang’s eyes herself, bending down. “Rest in peace, down among the dead.”

Edward eyed Mary soberly, blinking at her. How is it that she’s a pirate and an assassin with such a compassionate heart that was so obviously opposite of his own?

.0.

_Cuba, Arroyos, April 1718_

Life had been simple for Mary so far. But then everything went wrong when she decided to go on a raid along with Edward Kenway.

“Remember that scheme I told ya and Thatch about?” He said to her with all assurance of a king.

She remembered that Thatch called Edward mad for it. He wanted to attack a fleet, but she had seen the right in it, only if he took allies along with him who were also thirsty for plunder. “Aye.”

“Let us do it.”

“What, you and I off to raid a fleet of the Royal Navy?”

“You on yer ship and I on the Jack, yes. I imagine yer box is fast enough to keep up.”

She resented that implication. “I’ll have ye know me ship can go up to twelve knots with full canvas.” She may not have a brig as large as the Jackdaw, but her own has never failed her nor disappointed her.

He smiled for that. Sailing was in her blood and she knew her salt better than most men Edward had met. “Are you in, Captain Read?”

That was an odd title to hear. As Mary Read she could never be a captain, that privilege only belonged to James Kidd.

Her crew was in need for some loot and booty as she well knew. But it was her trust in Edward that made her go along on this plan of his. Thatch swore by him and Kenway wasn’t the only man around who admired the black bearded Edward Thatch.

Taking a page from Edward’s democratic regiment book, she inquired the lot of her crew if they inclined to join the Jackdaw and go on a dangerous raid against a royal fleet. None of them were against it, not even a whiff of dismay. 

That’s how she found herself on a voyage side by side with Edward Kenway, who was earning his reputation as a fearsome scourge all too fast. They had been at sea for no more than a week when everything went wrong. What started off as her jumping ship merely to read some charts, grew to something else entirely. It was harmless in the beginning, as it had been for every first few days she went to check the charts with Edward. That’s what they did; inspect maps and determine where the Navy fleet may be patrolling.

The charts lay unforgotten when Edward ignited a kiss – a kiss she fully intended to reject, or at the very least, cut short before long.

She did neither, though they were in the privacy of his cabin, that didn’t mean that they couldn’t be interrupted by anyone soon. And getting caught like this while on so much open water was dangerous business for her.  
It wasn’t something that passed through her mind when Edward was holding her and then eventually backstepping her against the drawing-table once he pressed against her. One by one the charting maps drifted to the boarded floor.

Not that Edward cared much of his charts. Too long it had been since he had the pleasure of feeling her lips on his. It was not a lie when he asked her along for a raid on the navy, but he had a personal agenda hidden as well with that proposal.

All too soon when he caught her he held her closer, his kisses turned longer and when his hands started wandering she knew she was dwelling in places she shouldn't be. She didn’t want to go there, she never wanted to go _there_ with Edward Kenway of all men. He was a brute, a pompous selfish arse and a whoremonger besides, but just as she couldn’t help to see the golden lining within him, she couldn’t deny the primal attraction she felt towards him. It had never failed to pass her notice that he had always been a handsome man; he was tall and he was strong and he had deep sapphire eyes that contrasted nicely with his dark blond hair, and when his wild kisses turned to heat, it was harder to pull away from him each and every time.

She tried to push all the physical aspects of Kenway out of her mind whenever she sees him because that was not what mattered. Him giving his precious pirate coven to the brotherhood, that mattered. Him helping freeing the assassins when Julien du Casse attacked Tulum – albeit it was by his doing that came to be – or that he aided the Bureau attacks around the West-Indies, or even that he took contracts for the assassins, even if he stated he wanted nothing to do with any order. And mayhaps even that he took a shot for her not three months ago, that all mattered.

It was all those traits in mind that she gave in to his lips and tongue and teeth whenever he snatched her somewhere private.

His hands fiddled with her vest and she didn’t stop him when her first belt fell to her feet. Neither did she stop him when he pushed her longcoat off her shoulders or when his mouth left hers to kiss her throat. Why would she stop him if this was exactly what she wanted?

He paid no more thought to loosen her blouse than he would if they were laces instead. Even as his lips traced her collarbone she wondered what the likes of Edward Kenway would see in her? Kenway, who’d fancied pretty women in linen and silken dresses, whereas she was in men’s breeches and boiled leather. Kenway, who chased after lasses who smelled like roses and sunlight, unlike her who must smell like sea salt and rum all the time. What did Edward Kenway want with her?

Questions she didn’t understand, as at the same Edward Kenway planted a soft kiss on her breast once he gotten the blouse down her arms. She gasped when his tongue followed the tattoo there. She, in turn, didn’t remain idle for long when she reached an arm around the back of his neck.

It was a dare to untie his robes and an even greater threat when she shifted against him. He groaned against her skin and she hooked one of her legs around his hips to pull him closer. As soon as her slender fingers got his robes off him, she pushed the blouse down his arms where she felt his muscles tense at her touch. He wound one of his arms around her waist, lifted her but an inch into the air while still flush against him and rested her back down on the drawing-table behind them.

His mouth found hers again, rougher this time, impatient to glide his tongue with hers and kiss her deeper than before. He pressed against her, hot and hard and imposing as he was, she still couldn’t find it in herself to stop him. Too far into it she was when she returned his kiss and one of his callused hands slithered down the dip of her waist, over her stomach and started to unstrap the strings of her breeches.

It was harder to get her trousers off her, even as he pulled her feet out of each boot. She said nothing when he did so and wanted him to hurry up even when her boots were gone. Almost teasingly he pulled everything down her hips in a manner that frustrated her. She noticed well enough for the sexual glint in those Persian blue eyes of his and then he feasted on the sight of the newly exposed skin. His hands explored the curve of her legs as he would map an island.

She held her breath when his thumb traced the tattoo around her thigh; a simply black ring no thicker than the top of a digit. If he wondered what it was or what it meant he didn’t ask, save for pulling back up against her, his attention once again brought to her lips.

She was naked before him, not for the first time, but this time she meant to have him in the same state of undress. She captured his face when he stole the very breath from her lungs. She ran her hands through his hair, over his strong shoulders and down his chest. His skin was warm, like the sands of a beach after a hot day, and covered with pricked ink she would love to discover what all of them are. Even as she found a way down his hard stomach to his trousers, loosening them to get what she wanted the most.

Everything went too fast after that. With his hands on her legs, he pulled her up against him, parting her knees when he did so. The groan he erupted as soon as he was inside her let her know that he was waiting for this – had wanted this for quite some time. There was an answering moan that shuddered through her when he shifted his hips to meet hers.

His mouth caressed the hallow of her throat even as he was slipping in and out of her, the rhythm going from slow to faster to harder in minutes as he pressed her against the flat surface of the drawing-table she was seated on. She gasped his name the deeper he went, her legs tightening behind her hips after each hard sure stroke. He pushed against her, again and yet again, steadily grunting before claiming her lips for a ravenous kiss.

He pushed up and into her, deep and sound and right. One of her knees rested in the nook of his elbow and his other hand held her hip in place when he drove into her again and then again.

It came almost as a shock, so surprised she was when he managed to make her finish before him. Her orgasm was a sudden white explosion behind her eyes and the ripples of it echoed through her body that made her tense. When she did so Edward let out almost a feral groan and no more than three thrusts later he came with her name on his lips.

She lay there, breathing hard with Edward Kenway panting on top of her and by all means still inside of her. The heat of her body never let up even though she was cooling down. Slowly her wits came to her and with that her sense, both moral and rational.

They should not have done this. She shouldn’t have with Edward Kenway, not with him she shouldn’t. He was a pirate and a self-made man, as he claimed he was himself.

Was it prudent to sleep with him? Not in the very least, but it was not in her nature to lie to herself; she wanted this. The same words rang through her mind again whenever she remembered why this shouldn’t have happened. He was a greedy, irresponsible brute, who mocked the creed and cared little for aught else than gold. It was the truth of it.

And it was a mistake. One that would never happen again.

.0.

It happened once again that very night and twice the next day.

By the third time, he needn’t even persuade her out of her clothes. She was unlacing herself by the time she stepped into his cabin. He was somewhat surprised to see her when she appeared, as if he wasn’t expecting her at the very moment, and the least of all that she was loosening the leather strings of her breeches when she closed the door behind her.

Edward was seated on a chair behind the same drawing-table they did it the first time on, doing Jaysus knows what with quill and ink. He let the quill fall when she entered inside. He had hardly asked why she was here when he fell silent mid-sentence, as she had dropped her blouse on her way and got her breeches down her knees even before she reached him.

Much to her pleasure he wasted no time slanting his mouth over hers and pulling her up on top of him. Her fingers were deft and elegant and eager when she pulled his cock out of its confinement and lowered down on him. They both cried out in pleasure and need. She held on to his shoulders, lifted just a bit above him then slid back down again. She repeated the action, setting her own preferred pace. It was all Edward could do not to throw her back on the drawing-table in front of them and have her way with her.

It seemed as if he didn’t know what to do with himself when she moved above him. His lips traced the pulse on her neck as his hands were tightly gripping her hips; guiding her into a faster pace that she resisted because she wanted the control. He let her and instead he made quick work of her bandana. Dark hair spilled over her shoulders and he twirled his hands through them, though his mouth slipped down her throat to her breast. His thumb swept over a pouting nipple, rising to meet his stroking fingers. With great care he sucked on the tender skin and she hissed as she felt his tongue on her. Teeth skimming over the tip of her breast and she arched her back when he released her, her skin glistening wetly from his attention.

His gaze was stormy with desire when he looked up at her. She panted against him but his name was on her breath even as she was circling her hips on top of him. They were still seated on the chair she found him in when she invaded his cabin, the wood of the seat creaking with their movements, yet Edward didn’t care whether or not the stool was able to hold all their weight. Her knees were on each side of him and stomach to stomach she rode them into bliss.

She may dress like a man, but she moaned as a woman when she comes. She was such a beautiful sight to behold, one he knew he should be careful around. Mary Read was someone he should have stayed off from. A woman as unique and special as her should remain unspoiled from a rotten pisspot like him. If he was honest with himself he was unworthy to even fancy the thought of being with her, but it was his greed that made him want to have even her.

And mayhaps, for once, his greed has given him the most precious gift in the world.

.0.

_Gulf of Mexico, May 1718_

He woke up to the feel of Mary’s lips on his spine. The tip of her tongue was tracing the dip in his back where he knew a drawn ink was pricked into his skin. Edward fast realized that she favoured the tattoo of a spade he had running down his back. She asked him just yesterday what the story behind his ink was.

He rolled around to face her and pulled her across him just to hold her close… and mayhaps also to feel her bare breasts pressed to his chest. “A story?” He didn’t know they came with a story. “What makes you think I have any?”

She rolled her hazel eyes and snorted an unladylike laugh. “Every tat a has tale, Edward. What’s the meaning behind that one?” Her hand managed to wriggle under his body and tapped his sword shaped ink there.

“Thatch was teaching me how to wield a sword at the time.”

She drew the outline of another tattoo on his chest with her index finger: the wheel of a ship’s helm around his left nipple. Her hands were slender, small and covered with little scars that any hardworking sailor earns over the years.

“And here I was thinking you swirled a sword most o’ ya life.”

He chuckled at the irony of his own memories. If only she knew how little he was capable of when he was a younger skinny lad, except get into brawls and woo women to bed. Not much of a difference now, he fancied, only that he had skills of the assassins now. “Nay, I could barely parry without losing the blade. When Thatch took me under him tutelage, he taught me swordsmanship, amongst other things. Once he deemed me adequate ‘nough him got me a Spanish spade... Which sank to the very bottom o’ the sea a fortnight later. I gained that tat you’re so fond of in such time.”

Over the years that Mary had known him, she understood that Ed Thatch was to Edward as Ah Tabai was to her; a mentor, a teacher, an idol.

“And what of you?” He asked in return. “What’s the tale behind this obscure tattoo right here?” He fingered the black circle around the inside of her thigh, dangerously close to her center. The corner of his lips lifted in a cocksure little way that is uniquely Edward, promising promiscuous things to come.

His hand lingered between her legs and she had a feeling he was less interested in her tale than he wanted to get a feel on her. “You remember Opía, don’t ya?”

The native female assassin with the tight abdomen and face paint. He met her in Tulum once, he remembered and then there was the other time she challenged him to a hunting match when he tried to warn her of Templars knowing where she operated.  
“Aye. She ain’t me biggest friend of the lot.”

Mary released a laugh. She wasn’t surprised Opía misliked Edward. The female assassin distrusted most who weren’t part of the brotherhood and she had even a bigger grudge against pale faced men. It took quite a time for Opía Apíto to warm up to anyone really, assassin or no, maroon or fair made no difference.

It was even stranger that Opía took to liking Mary as she did. “She’s the one who put it there for me. She told me that in her tribe, it signifies when a girl has become a grown woman.”

Edward raised an eyebrow at that. “A grown woman?”

There was a knowing look in her smirk. “When she ain’t no longer a maiden, Edward.”

Ah, quite.

Edward didn’t say anything further, but Mary could guess the question he was thinking of concerning her maidenhood. “I was married once too, ye know.”

That was a whole new puff of information Edward expected the least of her. The fearless swashbuckling pirate queen Mary Read was once married? The very thought seemed outrageous. Simply because she was a woman of her own, unbound by any man or obligation or children. She was free in the truest sense of the word, and marriage ties one down, as Edward would know. It wasn’t something he could picture Mary Read as; a wife and settled down.

“You were?”

“Aye. We were young, not yet eight-and-ten. We met on ship, if ye must know. I was yet passin’ as a cabin boy, but Tomas guessed there was somethin’ off ‘bout me and then we were in love.”

Love. It can change many a man… and women.

“He wasn’t quite made for the life on sea and when I revealed who I was, he asked me hand in marriage and we returned to his fatherland; Holland. Him father owned this small inn in Breda, that has splendid cheese I must say, and Tomas inherited it soon. I was quite content with my life for about a year, but then Tomas caught the sweating fever all too soon and he died within the month.”

They were naked in Edward’s cabin, talking about the old love life of a man who had passed away years ago, but it brought still unease to Edward. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Tomas was a good man, but if I didn’t leave Breda, I never would have gotten myself in Spanish Town and found Ah Tabai and his cause. I do miss the cheese though.”

“Of all things, it’s the cheese you long after?”

“Tomas taught me how to make yellow cheese. He said it was better than anyone in Gouda can ever produce.”

“I’m sure it was.”

She didn’t like the sceptical tone in his voice, even if it was just in jest. She hit him for that on his bare chest and the sting of it had him flinching. “Should there ever be a need of cheese, I can make it. What can you?”

Edward rolled his blue eyes upwards, thinking. Was there anything he can do better than killing and plundering? “I cut off a man’s nose once.”

.0.

_Cuba, Havana, December 1718_

She wasn’t planning on spending Christmas in Cuba, but that was where she found herself when the Christian holiday arrived. For the past years she spend it in the presence of the other assassins in the Brotherhood. They didn’t believe in European religions but they accepted the holiday as a personal preference to each its own. She wasn’t big on the traditional feast either, but she remembered when she was a child, how her brother earned enough coin to buy them half a chicken each year and they would roast it over the hearth on Christmas. It was one of the few days they ate so finely and soon even that stopped when Mark died.

Now she only remembered it for nostalgia’s sake and the assassins were as close to a family she assumed she’ll ever have. But the brotherhood was all the way in the East, still on Great Inagua, and Mary found herself stuck on Havana.

Or more likely stuck between the wooden wall of the tavern and Edward’s hard body.

When the month began, she came on a Templar hunt that started in Florida, but the man’s headquarters – she soon learned while she was tailing him – was back in Havana. She didn’t kill him immediately, in case she got wind of where the Sage kept himself hidden. Upon reaching Havana, however, she met the very Devil of the West-Indies docked to the Cuban port as well. She cursed her luck and told herself she kept herself hid away from him as well, should the dimwit decide to nose in her business and screw her entire mission up.

He found her within the day of course, but she managed to push him away and avoid him for as long as a fortnight until she got all the information she needed on the Templar. Once he was useless, she made the kill. And she had hardly retrieved her bloody hidden blade, when she was pulled into a haystack.

Even in the dim light, his eyes sparkled an aqua blue of mischief and desire. “Jaysus, Edward!” She punched him on the shoulder, making him groan and yet laugh at the same time. “What are you doing here, ye codger?!”

“You told me to stay away from you until after ye managed this kill.” He wounded his arms around her waist. “Ye just did, didn’t ya?”

She elbowed him in the side so he would let her go. “Aye and we’re still on his land. We can be detected any moment. Are you completely daft?”

A boyish grin settled on his lips she wished she could wipe from his face. “Quite.” He didn’t give her another moment to protest before his lips were on her.

This wasn’t the time nor the place to get felt up by Kenway, but she would be lying if she said that she didn’t want him. They parted ways half a year ago. Half a year where she pretended that at night she didn’t miss his touch or what kind of wonders he could do with his tongue alone between her legs in the darkness.

She let Edward have his kiss before she pushed him off and sneered at him as quietly as she could. They still needed to escape the area. But even though the scoundrel was a self-inflated braggart, she could count on him to have her back, at the very least. They pulled out and braced the walls, with Edward putting any guard to sleep who stood in their way. 

He was looking forward to the moment he could have Mary Read all to himself.    

That moment never came, though.

When they tailed back towards the Assassin’s Bureau to mark down the dead Templar, Rhona Dinsmore was present as well and in want of a partner to celebrate Christmas with.

“Them go big in these city with ‘dis day, yah kno’?” Rhona clenched an arm around James Kidd’s neck as she did so. “Them Spanish jackers ‘ave a knack with celebrating all these shite holy days in grandiose overreaction! And where e’er there’s overreaction, there be lotta liquor too. Let’s go!”

Mary laughed in good humour and returned the headlock to Rhona in return. “I’d wager I can easily drink you under the table.”

“Yeh wanna bet on it, do yeh? How many Reales would yeh lay down to lose on that?”

Mary wasn’t going to lose to their drinking match. Nay, ne’er. “Enough to make me pass round o’ tankard for the lot of the tavern for the rest o’ the month!”

“Oh-ho-ho, we’s see ‘bout that!” Rhona pulled Mary along to tall wooden building that was the rowdiest tavern in Cuba, or so she claims, to lose a drinking bet she had no intention of winning.

And Edward Kenway only sulked behind them.

.0.

The tavern was wobbling about Mary in a vague blur that wouldn’t seem to keep still. Rhona still hadn’t given up on their game of drink, but she was drunk off of her wits, Mary knew she was. She was sitting on the lap of a young fellow, on the point of such a stupor that she’s sharing her bottle of rum with the chap she was seated on. Rhona had drunk more than enough liquor that could drown any other man and Mary wasn’t going to admit defeat to her sister assassin, so she had downed just as much.

That probably explains why the tavern kept waving about her as if the world was unbalanced. Rhona had no care in the world anymore in her state; though she was on the lap of the handsome bloke and still choking down alcohol as if it was water, she was also singing along with the Spanish tavern jigs that the musicians wouldn’t stop playing. She sang off key, with the most horrendous accent to the Spanish tongue Mary had ever heard and probably with a few words mispronounced as well, but neither Rhona nor Mary cared much about any of it.

Their only care in the world was drinking away their lives in honour of Christmas day and spending such in good company. Some men and women opted to dance on the more colourful tunes of the typical Spanish music. They clapped their hands and stomped their feet on the wooden floors in time with the beat, creating a rich sound than what just merely the instruments could produce.

Thankfully, the two of them weren’t the only ones too deep in their cups. More than enough sailors of all entities and races gathered on, drinking and smoking and eyeing into the bottom of their pouches, to see if they have enough coin to buy a tavern wench to accompany them for a night. The company was rough, men arm wrestled drunkenly about the place, people were yelling infinities, women screeched their fake laughter to the men they were entertaining, others were bidding money to games, some were pushing another and spilling liquor all over the other. So the company went. Mary learned that no matter where she set sail, taverns were the same the world over.

She also knew that it were times like these where she has to feign interest in any whore about the place just keep her James Kidd disguise up, but at the moment she was too drunk to keep up her pretentious façade. She drank and she laughed as she listened to crude tales of other drunk laughing men who were telling wild tales of their adventures all over the West-Indies.

Everyone joined the merry-making. Everyone, all but one. As drunk as she may be, her instinct was always par as an assassin. She eyed the exit of the tavern every minute or so and an escape route to said exit, and pick out suspicious men lurking in the shadows. She took a gander about the tavern again and instead of finding some Templar associate spying about, she caught the clear gray-blue orbs of Kenway staring straight at her.

Granted, her vision was a bit blurry at first from all the alcohol she consumed, but when her eyesight stilled, she recognized him easily enough in the dim light just by the intensity of his eyes.

She had kept note of his presence all night long, even when her swashbuckling mind was swirling to the opposite side of sober. If her skills as assassin didn’t give away the tell-tale sign that she was being watched, then the weight of his eyes throughout her whole stay here would definitely have.

She also knew that he had hardly drank a whole mug of rum since he took his place there and he hadn’t moved an inch since they arrived. She only needed one guess to know what he wanted tonight.

And Rhona Dinsmore had cut those hopes short when she dragged Mary along to some tavern as drinking companion. Not that Rhona seemed like she needed Mary’s companionship any longer, for she and the Spanish lad she was sitting upon were all over each other by now. Tippled as they were but still quite comfortable with one another. Too comfortable, mind you. It wasn’t until Mary was too tired in being third wheel that she decided to leave the lot of them behind.

It was well into the wee hours of the night, but the musicians never stopped stomping to their Flamenco tunes and folk never stopped singing along. When she announced her departure to Rhona, she wasn’t sure the other assassin had heard her at all. The world tipped to its side when Mary got up from her wooden stool. She felt like she was on the deck of her ship in the middle of a sea storm, that’s how much the world was swaying when she rose to her feet.

She wobbled a bit, but since she had grown herself a steady pair of sea legs over the years, it wasn’t hard to adjust to her drunken stumble. Once she was outside of the tavern she couldn’t believe how much she longed for fresh air. Inside it reeked like alcohol and old sour sweat and smoke and whatever else stink when so many people press on together in a small space.

She was just glad to be out of there after gulping down at least a dozen tankards of rum or ale down her system, and all she wanted at that moment was to find a place to catch a closed-eye and she can sleep off the rest of her drunkenness. She was heading back to the docks so she can rest in her cabin, but she had not taken two strides from the tavern when she halted in her step.

She should have known from the moment she didn’t spot him on her way out of the tavern, but mayhaps she couldn’t hold her liquor as expertly as she thought to believe. “Are you going to follow me all the way home, Sir Kenway?”

He dropped down off the roof he was hunched on. He wasn’t trying to keep himself hid at all. “What kind of a gentleman would I be, if I let a lady walk in the middle of the night in her lonesome?”

She quickly looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was in close proximity to hear them, but it was just her and the Welsh pirate and if there were people about, she was too pissed by drink to know. “Lucky for ye, there ain’t no ladies around.”

“Ain’t there?” She didn’t hear his footsteps coming closer to her. Either he has been learning to step lightly or she was in a more drunken state than she thought.

She wagered it was the latter. “I don’t see any.”

“I beg to differ.” It was no way to swoon a woman, much less her - _especially_ not her - but he kissed her all the same. And she let him, because his lips were able to convince her much sweeter than any words he could muster.

His mouth was hot and his tongue tasted like alcohol, and that wouldn’t help her sober up at all. She felt him tilt her chin up towards him, their kiss deepening when he did so. Her hand found its way up his shoulder to his neck and into his golden hair before long to get him even closer. It must have been an eternity since she has kissed Edward Kenway and it almost frightened her how much she longed for him since.

He wound an arm around her and pulled her flush against him. “Edward,” He sought after her lips even before she could finish her protest. “What if somebody sees?”

His lips were hot on her throat when he whispered against her. “Does it looks like I care?”

He doesn’t. At all. Edward was the kind of man who would hang the rules and disregard anyone else in the progress. It was a flaw she has pointed out in the past before; he was selfish, rude and insolent, and she would have scolded him for it were it any other day.

Right now, she couldn’t find it in herself to care. Not while Edward was backing her up and pushing her against the wooden back wall of the tavern with his body. She could clearly hear the men’s bottles clanking against one another as they toasted on something of mediocre honour. The tunes of the Spanish Flamenco were loud and buzzed, and whenever the dancers stomped to the beat, it felt like they stomped in her head.

But the pain blended all too well with the feeling of Kenway’s mouth sucking on the skin of her throat. His hands flittered through the layers of her clothing and vaguely she became aware that he was unbuckling one of her belts around her waist already. She was drunk, too drunk even to dissent where this was all going. _If_ she wanted to dissent at all. It took less than a moment for him to lift her against said wooden wall to keep her up and wrap one of her legs around his hips.

She remembered that she said his name, but it came out only as a husky encouragement than a vexed protest as she intended it to be. He kissed her again, deep and long and as soon as he pressed against her, all she felt was pleasure running down her spine.

Damn him to hell, but she wanted him.

By what she felt of him when he was flushed hard on her, she could tell the feeling was likewise. His touch was desperate and his kiss was impatient, yet she was too far off to care how fast everything was escalating. She was drunk; both on rum and on Edward and she knew she was too far gone when her own hands started to explore for his naked skin.

It was probably the only time she cursed the assassin outfit that he so graciously had stolen. Her vision was still blurry, now even more when pressed against Edward and high on lust, and she couldn’t find any thread to pull or buttons to unbutton to get his bloody clothes off his back. There was the sound of a tear, yet she sighed when she managed to slip her hand into his robes. It felt like a hundred years since she touched him and even longer since she enjoyed his touch on her. His body was warm and she immensely liked the feel of her fingers whispering over his hard stomach. She had waited too long for this.

But they shouldn’t be doing this, not here, not now in the open like this. It was their luck there was no one about, but that wouldn’t stay like that. She was pressed right to the back of the tavern filled with men and women inside. The Spanish music was loud behind her ears but Edward panting against her skin was louder.

His mouth fused with hers hotly. Her fuzzy mind encouraged the route his hands were taking. He was loosening the straps of her trousers, she could feel it. The anticipation coursed through her veins, waiting for the pleasure she was too certain that was to come should his fingers reach their destination.

Yet a small voice kept telling her they shouldn’t do this. “Edward.” However she managed to pull away from his lips, she didn’t know. “Edward, no. Stop.”

Kenway took off just far enough from her until only the tip of their noses bumped into each other. Her alcohol-induced vision couldn’t see much in the dark and she realized she missed seeing his desire-filled eyes on her.

“Why?” He panted against her lips.

“I am not-" She tried to catch her breath. “I ain’t doin’ this with you here, Kenway.” Even though her drunken mind really wanted to. “Anyone could see.”

The last time she exposed herself so openly, he caught her and knew her real identity. It was something that should never happen again. And if Edward was too impatient to wait until they were somewhere private, she wasn’t going to do shite, no matter how drunk she may be. She heard the men inside the tavern cheer as the musicians finished a song. They demanded another and the dancers started the intro of another Flamenco jig. They tapped their feet in time with the beat and clapped their hands to add to the tune.

Edward smiled down at her, a positively devious grin, promising mischief as he usually does. He gave a peck on her lips before lowering her down on her feet and took a step off from her. She couldn’t believe how disappointed she was when he detached himself completely off her, how much she regretted her words and wished the warmth of his taller frame on her again.

Her wish wouldn’t go unfulfilled by long. Her alcohol-induced mind had not much control over her surroundings and Edward managed to turn her on her heel so she was facing the wooden tavern wall, and then he pressed into her backside as tightly as he had when he was at her front.

She didn’t know why she moaned, but by the gods she did. Her spine tingled, her legs trembled, her stomach clenched, her vision spun and her cheek pressed against the hard wooden planks in front of her.

“Edward!”

He planted a kiss behind her ear, his breath fanning over her neck. “I imagine no one could see who or what you are like this.”

He had turned her over, pressing his hips to her arse and her face was scratching on the back wall of the tavern, with the Flamenco song still loud in her ear. She wanted to object, she wanted to so much, but she had been denying herself his advancement once before and it took less than a second to remorse her own words. It may have been her drunken side who didn’t push him off her completely, for want to give in to her baser needs. There was no use denying that she wanted Edward. Right now, here in the open and as fast and hard as they could manage.

He prevailed, as ever. His fingers were quicker than cutpurses when they slipped down the front of her trousers. She felt him trace the black ring tattoo that circled her thigh before they travelled to the place where they should be. 

She couldn’t sober up if she tried. Too much alcohol and then too much lust besides, she did nothing but aid Edward when he dared to roll her trousers down her hips and it dangled between her knees. That same bloody voice somewhere inside her screamed this was wrong, so wrong, but what he made her feel when he slipped inside her from behind her was ever so good, too good.

A moan quitted from her throat and she heard her name on his lips just behind her ear in a raw groan. She didn’t mind any of what Edward was saying, if he said something sensible at all. Too sauced to care and all she wanted in her current state was for him to take her harder, no matter how indignant the position they were in right now.

She was so close, so fast already. It felt too good and he went inside her so deep, while he fucked her nearly on the fast beat of the Flamenco that was playing on the other side of the wooden wall she was pressed against. In her drunken stupor she couldn’t contain her voice either. She wouldn’t be surprised if half the tavern had heard her moaning like a common whore on the other side of the flimsy wall.

He gently twisted her neck enough to kiss her, whether to silence her or for what ever other reasons, she did not know. And as soon as his thrusts behind her became erratic, her vision exploded into a matrix of stars when she came. It was beautiful and so painful it became pleasure. Or was it the other way around?

Her orgasm seemed to last forever, even so that she didn’t know when Edward finished. She would have known if she had been sober, but she was too warm and her mind was buzzing, and all she wanted to do was sleep now. She did feel him slip out of her when he released her from his backward hug and he dressed her properly back up.

She would have called him a gentleman for his deeds, but what he did just now to her not mere minutes ago was anything but gentlemanly like behaviour.

The alcohol still clouded her mind heavily. It seemed like their escapade had taken hours in what reality must have been minutes, but left her no less satisfied. She was reduced to a state of a willow, where she swayed with every wind and everything felt fuzzy and warm like she usually does after sex.  

Her legs were soft like grog-blossoms and she felt uneven on her feet, but Edward was still there for her to lean on. That’s how they made their way from the Cuban tavern in the dark, with her holding his arm and still be completely at ease. He even led her back to her ship where it was docked, saw to it that she was safely aboard and inside her cabin too.

She was unbinding her bandana a bit clumsily for she was still a wee bit drunk, but there was a feeling of relief when her hair fell down freely. She felt his hand in her hair before long, curling a lock between his fingers as if he was inspecting it. “I’ll see you about?” He asked.

She may have nodded, mayhaps she didn’t. She was heading straight for her bed, ready to sleep the alcohol off. “I’m sure I will.”

He even stole a kiss before he left, as if they were in one of those mushy fiction women love to read about. By the next morning, she heard the Jackdaw and its crew had set their sails to make the seas unsafe once more.

.0.

That was the last time they saw each other for nearly two years.

Nassau had fallen. It was a sad affair, to see the republic that he had so much faith in going back into the hands of the king. A place that was meant for liberty, out from under the thumb of any greedy government or monarchy, had turned into a pit of idleness and rot. But when men don’t do anything to the republic except dicing, drinking and fucking, the outcome of such was only natural.

Benjamin Hornigold had the right of it in the end.

It was a hard thing to sail off from his beloved Nassau. And since he broke through the Royal Navy’s blockade to escape Woodes Rogers and his like, Edward felt like everything had fallen apart since then. Hornigold joined the Templars and turned his cloak on the lot of them. Thatch had never returned to Nassau again, to Edward’s horror. And going back home to Bristol is not an option either. He was a wanted man, with a price on his head and he was still not rich enough to escape with Caroline. As for his wife, whom he hasn’t heard a single word from since he left so many moons ago, was probably beyond caring now anyway.

He hadn’t seen Mary Read in so long either and not because of lack of trying. He tried his very hardest to locate her, but neither sailor nor Assassin had the answers he sought of her whereabouts. The year of 1718 was the last he saw her and in 1719 nothing happened for the better. Edward brought death to Ben Hornigold’s doorstep. He heard Stede Bonnet was caught and hanged for the crime of committing piracy and not long after, news reached him that Edward Thatch has given up on his old ways of pirating himself. In that time, Edward was trying to find the Sage to get to the Observatory once and for all, but he found Charles Vane instead. The plan to find the Sage fell to the water when Calico Jack Rackham viciously mutinied both Vane and Kenway, and they were left behind to see Rackham sail away on the Jackdaw.

Marooned Edward was when 1719 turned to 1720, but he managed to save himself when he captured a merchant ship singlehandedly and sailed himself off to Great Inagua.

Much to his surprise, he found the Jackdaw anchored to the docks as if nothing happened.

That was how Edward saw Mary again, seated in the tavern sharing a drink with Adéwalé, as James Kidd and with no care in the world. The whole island cheered when it was known that Master Edward Kenway had returned safe and sound – even the assassins that Edward had offered his secret cove to as a new location.

It turned out Rackham did not stay captain of the Jackdaw for long. His miserable arse didn’t had the courage to sail for less than a month before he crawled back to Nassau. It was Mary who freed Adéwalé from Rackham’s clutches and together they stole back the Jackdaw. Their heading was to return to Great Inagua before setting off to save Kenway from his lonesome faith, but he got himself to his secret cove before that happened.

Along with Rackham, darling Anne Bonny had come along too, who wanted to leave Nassau for quite some time. Now ashore of San Inagua, she didn’t wait a single night to find work in the tavern once again. It was her place, she said.

It was after Anne had served Edward a cup of rum that he turned to Adé and Kidd and thanked them both for their trouble.

But it was in the privacy of his manor that Edward had thanked Mary again.

He was a bit sauced of drink, just to celebrate that he made it off that island alive, but he was no more roysted than he had to be. When he stumbled into his mansion, it was empty. Until he stepped into his bedchamber, deciding to sleep the rest of the night off.

He found Mary Read instead.

Only a handful of candles were lit , but even so he could see that her red bandana still held her hair bound. And that was all she wore.

For a moment Edward thought that it was his drunken imagination playing tricks with him, but when he saw her shining in the candlelight all the effects of alcohol flushed out of him. In silence he stood, drinking in the glories of her body on that four-poster bed, the tattoo at the hollow of her throat, the swell of her breasts, the curved dip between her waist and hip, the black ring tattoo around her bare thigh. And then somehow he was holding her by the small of her back to get her as close as possible, while she ran her hands through his hair.

It had been nearly two years since he had last seen her and he would make up that time with zeal.

.0.

_Bahamas, Great Inagua, March 1720_

They hadn’t left the mansion for a week.

Dawn was breaking on the horizon when he woke up to her poking his side. He grunted half-asleep, mumbling something that it was too early to be awake. He remembered her once telling him that sunrise was too early a time to be up and about. And yet here she was, waking him up. “Ye better have a good reason for awakening me.”

“I heard it’s yer birthday, you old scratch.” Her breath fanned over his skin when she spoke.

He lazily rolled around. The ends of her hair tickled his chest and it took less than a second to run his fingers through said hair. If she had a liking to his tattoo on his back, he had one with her hair. “Who told you?”

She chuckled, rolling her eyes. “I have me ways.”

Edward had but a single guess. “T’was Adéwalé, wasn’t it?”

She neither confirmed nor denied it, but she smiled, a beautiful smile that caught the first rays of sunlight as well as his breath.

He wanted to kiss her, but she held a finger to his lips. “Remember the secret fall ye shown me?”

Wasn’t it the waterfall he presented to her about four years ago so she wouldn’t be caught again naked? “Aye.”

“Let’s get there.”

Edward wasn’t sure. They passed the majority of the time inside his mansion and he didn’t want to leave the warmth of his bedchamber with her. “I suppose it’s not necessary to go there, is it?”

Yes, it was. With them spending the week doing not much else but tumbling between the sheets, she felt it was dire time they set off somewhere where there’s clean water. She was sticky and a film of sweat covered her all over. “Ye can stay here if ya want, but I’m going.”

And that was of course how she managed to get him out of the mansion as they raced, once again, through the jungle to the very waterfall he showed her the first time he invited the whole Assassin’s Bureau to move to Great Inagua.

He attacked her as soon as she was under the harsh spray of the fall. He pressed the length of his lean body against her back, while water ran between them. He brushed her wet hair away with a finger from her throat and nuzzled her neck, before he hugged her by her slim waist to keep her hard against him. She felt him plant a kiss on the tattoo of an eagle taking flight on her right shoulder blade.

She turned around in his arms to kiss him, but she met his eyes instead. He didn’t say anything to her or even kiss any part of her when he was inside her.

If they did this solely for pleasure, then pleasure it most definitely was. That was what Mary told herself even as Edward entwined his fingers through hers when he held her hand and brought her to new heights. Their coupling was slow this time, with the water rushed from above them and a rainbow glittered somewhere in the sky. There was no great haste to finish as usual. There was no impatience or rushing towards bliss. Instead, the way he touched her was almost soft, as he leisurely took his time exploring her body, even while they didn’t disconnect from each other.

It was an euphoric torture when he touched her like that, where Mary tried not to think why he was doing this and why with her and why in this manner, but tried to focus on what he was doing to her when she reached her peak.

He only kissed her when he filled her and breathed her name against her lips. He said nothing when he led her back into the water or even when they were returning towards the manor. It was Mary who broke the silence by telling him that she would pass by Ah Tabai. There might have been a pout on his face when he realized she would have to leave his side.

She left to do her business and Edward was left behind with all his musings.

Since the moment Edward first kissed Mary, he knew she was nothing to be kept to his heart. They bedded each other on the silent agreement that all what they had was merely physical. Edward was married and Caroline Scott was never too far from his mind. He did enjoy his time greatly whenever he was with Mary. Hard as it was to clear his conscious after every so act, it was difficult to admit that he tends to forget about his wife when he was with the infamous pirate queen, and their coupling happened more often of late.

Much like liquor, Edward knew he had to quit her, but there was a part of him that kept longing back to Mary Read. When either of them took to sea once more, their separation was for months. And always, every single time they left each other, Edward would tell himself that the next time he sees her – if he ever saw her again and neither of them got killed in their exploits – he wouldn’t touch her. He swore that this time would be their last time together.

Yet for all the prowess he proudly boast to have like a bloody peacock, he was weak. He only had to see a glimpse of her, disguised as James Kidd or otherwise, and there was a need in him to get her alone as soon as possible. He would never admit how much he wanted her to stay close to him. Or how much he longed for her touch.

It were dangerous waters he was swimming in indeed, and he wondered if he wasn’t already slowly drowning.

.0.

“Tell me, Mary, once you said you saw I would do great things in the future. Was this all included?” Edward pointed to the bed, their nakedness and everything else that included in that gesture.

The windows were all thrown open simply because the breeze passing through was the only thing that brought relief from the constant humid weather of these West-Indies. And with Edward pressed to her at all times, the temperature could only be warmer.

“I didn’t,” The last thing she ever expected from her future was to sleep with Edward Kenway. “But even so I don’t regret it.” She looked up at him, meeting his eyes. 

"And yet you insisted once I would do good in the future." He remembered the words. She had told him that throughout the years on several occasions. Edward thought that she believed in it more so than himself. His goals for his life weren't the same as she wanted his to be. And with the way things were going between them, he thought he ought to know what she meant finally. What she truly meant. "Do you still think so?"

"Aye, I do." Mary sat upright, fully turning to him. "You are capable of so much things, Edward, if only ye can see that too. You can build things up, things that matter, make a change."

It all sounded like fancy talk to him. Even so, her good faith in him left him awed. “What is it that makes you believe in me so?”

She always had way of seeing the good bearing in men. Just like how assassins had the Sense, she had an intuition beyond that. It’s how she survived on ships by judging the captain’s character and that was also how she agreed to marry Tomas. It was that same intuition that told her she had to follow Ah Tabai the moment she laid eyes on him in Spanish Town, and that she could trust him and his creed. She had the right of it. And when she met Edward Kenway as a privateer some long years ago, she knew he was exceptional. There was more than a sense that told her Edward Kenway was a man destined to be of great means and purpose one day.

She would have thought that Kenway would think that too, with the way he carries himself, all cheeky and presumptuous as he was.

“I can’t tell ya that unless you see it for yerself.”

It wasn’t the answer he was looking for from her, and a silence stretched between them while he mulled her words over, but she wouldn’t be Mary if her reply was anything but cryptic. He always thought she said it because she wanted him to be an assassin. He wasn't ready to be one yet, if he ever was.

And yet, she was quite clear on her intentions when she revealed that she would soon leave again. “There’s a contract I’m plannin’ to take soon and I want ye to come with me.”

As much as it appeals to set on a voyage with Mary on his side, he was done being idle after the year he just put behind him. He wasn’t an assassin, as much as she would like him to be. It was only the money he was after that the assassins offered with such contracts, but he had now realized it’ll never give him the fortune that he sought. He was done procrastinating his true purpose here.

“I can’t. I’m going to find the Sage and then the Observatory.”

“Do I need to remind ye that we are lookin’ for the Observatory too? Find the Sage with us.”

The assassins wanted to hide the place. Edward wanted to _sell_ the place. “Not if the assassins offer me its worth in coin.” There was where their interests clashed.

It was always the same story with him, wasn’t it? “Does nothing else but the stink of gold wrinkle yer nose?”

He didn’t like the way she snapped at him. Where her tone was calm not long before had switched into a frustrated disdain. “What’s gotten to you?”

“Reality, mate.” She sneered with a scorn. She in turn was tired of his ignorance. It was always the same with him, the fool. “Does anything else matter to you except coin, or is everything you do just out of spite, Edward?!”

Her temper was not the only one that has risen. They did not argue a lot, but whenever they did it was a heated affair in which neither of them would stand down; pigheaded fools that they were.

“It’s not because of spite I’m doing this, Mary, but courage!” Despite honest words, he was hissing them in her face, stepping all too close when he did so.

“Courage for what, for who?” If he wouldn't fight to be something grand, then what was the point of his greed? Was his egoistical needs so low?

“For Caroline!” He snapped, anger making him spill his words. “I do it for Caroline. She was a merchant’s daughter, accustomed to luxury and she married beneath her. She had servants who cared for her every whim and when she became my wife she was – she became a sheep’s herder. I didn’t want her to be poor.” All sorts of painful memories returned. “And I was sick of my life there. Too many dreams of seein’ the world, takin’ to the high seas and find riches… but she told me she didn’t need it. That she would _settle_ with her life.”

He mentioned the word as if it was something foul. “And yet I was eager to go. I wanted to leave that place altogether. And I left. But not before she left me. I swore to return a rich man, a man of prosperity and means. No one believed me I would, no one had faith in me. I wanted the adventure so I left. I wanted the gold, so I left. To prove them all wrong.”

The man had it all backwards. How is it that someone as rational as Edward, wasn’t satisfied with what he had? “You had a comfortable life? With parents who supported you and a wife who left you, to pursuit riches? It sounds contradictory to me.” If she had what he had, she would’ve stayed.

“I want a taste of the good life. An easy life.”

“No one honest has an easy life, Edward. And it’s aching for one that causes the most pain.” It was wrong to say the following and she would regret such words when it was too late. “No wonder your wife left ya.”

That arrow hit too close to the mark. The glare that settled on him was the coldest Mary had ever seen, so icy it nearly burned.

His tone was rigid and forcibly calm when he spoke between clenched teeth. “Don’t speak of her. She was the only woman I’ve truly loved.”

And that was enough information for Mary. Her lips, which he had kissed over a hundred times or more, parted slightly when his words dawned on her. Her incredulous look didn’t stay long, for fury set in a second later.

“Oh, ye did it all for ye sweet wife, did ya? While ye raided off gold for her and fucked me for yer own pleasure, is that the way of it?”

He was a fool. “No, Mary, t’is not like that. I was young and I love her and I left her... or she left me – but it’s been years and the way we parted…” He tried to grab her arm to soothe her, to calm her, so she would know that he was stupid and he wasn’t meant to be so blunt. “Please, Mary, you have to understand that it’s not like that anymore.”

“Oh, I understand.” She yanked her arm away from him. She was his whore and nothing more. Her eyes burned hot but she willed it down and from her lips bubbled a sceptical laugh so sour, it nearly hurt. “I understand you completely, Kenway.”

The way she spit his name was final. He couldn’t get a word in between no matter how much he begged her. She left him, storming away more like, grabbing her clothes as she got out of the French mansion that was now Edward’s.

.0.

Anne was snorting quite an piglet like laugh on the completely rickety Calico Jack was telling once again. The man had a flair for drama unlike any other she has ever seen before.  
She wasn’t the only one who liked Rackham’s tales. As it were, the whole of the tavern joined round their table to hear the jolly wild adventures of the one and only Calico Jack. And he had more than a handful of them to tell. It was only Jack Rackham who was able to make most dreadful of tales into a jest.

Such as she was laughing again when she saw sweet Jim Kidd stomping away past the tavern. She recognized James well enough for the too big clothes on her slender frame, even in the dim light. Anne rose from her seat, some men cheering and asking a song out of her but she pushed them away. “Ah, hush ya rapscallions! Don’t ye hear there’s already some singin’?”

True to her word, it was never quiet in the tavern. And she didn't move in need to be begged for a song. Jack was well on his way on getting pickled and when he was too deep in his cups his stories usually turn for the good. Anne hadn’t seen James in quite some time, if anything she should come in, take a seat, share a mug o’ ale and listen to Calico’s outrageous tales.

“James, oy Jim!” Anne called over to her, but she neither turned nor stopped when Anne yelled for her.

James Kidd only hurried away in a pace that was too fast to bode anything good. Anne wondered where she was going if half of Kidd’s own crew was within the tavern.

“James? James, wait up.” Anne landed down the mugs she was carrying and instantly followed her friend without. “Uhh, lad, hold on!” She called for again as she followed James’ furious footsteps.

She figured that there was something gravely wrong with her friend. Mary never acted like this with Anne. The Irish lass had sprung all the way from the tavern through the small town of San Inagua until Mary reached the soft sands of the beach. Mindful that no one was around to see, Anne gently touched her friend on the shoulder. “Mary? Mary, what’s the matter?”

Her friend said nothing and once she came to a standstill, she kept her back to Anne.

“Mary?”

“I’m a fool.” She breathed in a tone of voice Anne had never heard on the brave Mary Read.

“What?! What for? What happened?”

“He said he only ever truly loved his wife.”

Mary didn’t need to switch around for Anne to see her, but the pirate’s voice trembled and sounded thinner than Anne had ever heard of her. It also didn’t take two figs to figure out about whom Mary was talking about and Anne knew immediately this was worse than she thought it to be.

Mary had never told Anne in quite so many literal words what she and Edward Kenway had between them, but Anne had her own fine working eyes and she could see herself the looks the two shared when they thought no one was watching. And now she did have such confirmation that the two had more betwixt them than they let on. It was a thought Anne wished she had more time to progress, but she had a friend to consulate first and foremost.

“Ye kno’ that bloody Kenway. He… He yaps things more without using him brain.” Mary slowly shook her head, still refusing to look at Anne.

There used to be spats between Edward and Kidd before, in the days when Anne didn’t know who James Kidd really was yet, but all of the outburst would be forgotten once they met up again.

This, whatever it was, seemed awfully more serious than anything before. Anne touched her arm and Mary finally deigned to face her. It was worse than she could fear.

She was crying.

Mary Read was crying. Silent tears were running down her smooth cheeks and her high cheekbones. Her eyes were a red vague colour and she looked more so Mary Read than she did as James Kidd in such a state.  
Anne gasped, hugging her friend immediately. Anne had never seen Mary cry, for anyone of anything. She was the strongest person she would ever know.

Mary loved Edward. Anne could see that plainly now, even if Mary would most likely deny such observation. Mary Read, the pirate queen, loved Captain Edward Kenway, or else she wouldn’t be shedding tears for him. And he broke her heart, like men always do. The dogs.

“Forget the bastard, ye should.” Anne told her while she still hugged her, rubbing her back as well just cause she could.

Mary, on the other hand, cleaned all traces of emotion from her face when she finally looked up at Anne. “Let’s leave this place.”

The redheaded lass blinked confusedly at the sudden change of tone. “Leave?”

“Aye. You and I. We’s jump ship and bring terror to these West-Indies seas.”

Anne didn’t know where this offer came from but she could guess Mary did it to escape one particular person. “You want me to be a sailor, like? I dunno. Is I able to do such a thing as a woman?”

It was James who snorted a laugh, as if she wasn’t just emotional about a certain captain no mere minutes ago, and she crossed her arms in a way that was typically her. “Oh, tosh! I know a score o’ ladies who can climb the reef and dogwash the sails like any man.”

The prospects seemed fair to Anne. It wasn't something she imagined she’d ever do, but she would be lying if she said she never thought about it; being a pirate and all that. “Ye’ll teach me? Also how to handle a cutlass, like? Oh, and a pistol!”

“That and more.” Mary’s smile promised her. "But yous be able to want it and work for it.” Unlike Edward, who refuses to see the benefit of it and only thought of his greed now. The very image of the man in her mind made her throat swollen, so she disregarded him from her thoughts. “There be no idling to glory. No stumbling into true success.”

Behind them, Mary heard bushes rustle and heavy uneven footsteps in the sand. She quickly engaged her hidden blade, deciding that she would run Kenway through if it turns out to be him, but she put her blades away as soon as she saw that it was Jack Rackham who fell towards them. She should have known; no assassin or any sneaksby would be this loud.

“Oi, what’cha be doing with my lass there, lad?” He was drunk, as ever, but in his right mind enough to have followed Anne out of the tavern.

The man was as flamboyant as ever with his colourful feathers of a parrot braided into his hair. A golden tooth shone from his mouth whenever he grinned. On his feet were sandals instead of the leather boots many respected seamen wore. Being born in Trinidad, his fashion was a bit more off and a lot more attention worthy than those who fared from Europe. Each time Mary saw him, he wore a different brightly coloured blouse and vests made of the foreign calico material, and she has heard that others have been naming him Calico Jack because of it.

He was a sot and a scallywag with ridiculous stories to tell wherever he goes. Most of them untrue to be sure, but he made many a man laugh and managed to swoon quite a few women out of their skirts as well. Anne Bonny was apparently one of them.

“That’s my girlie yer making love to!” He drunkenly reached for his sword on his hip and pulled it out to clearly challenge James Kidd to duel for Anne’s honour.

If the sight of naked steel intimidated Mary at all, she didn’t show. “Ah, piss off, Rackham. Lad is the last thing ye should be calling me.”

Mayhaps Rackham wanted to impress the young Irish missy with him duelling Kidd, but Anne only gasped horrified. “What ye doing, Jack? Put that thing down!”

But Jack Rackham did not seem to hear his beloved girlie. Instead he pointed the tip of his sword up in Kidd’s direction. “Is that right, eh, _lad_?!” He emphasized the title as if it was a taunt to provoke James Kidd into a fight. “Come on boy!”

Mary shook her head. “Nay, Rackham.”

Anne wasn’t having any of it. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, put that bloody blade away Jack or I will shove it somewhere the sun ain’t shinin’!”

Jack stood a bit puzzled at her threat. “But, Anne, love-“

“He is not after me like that. I can assure ye.”

“No?”

Mary chuckled. “I don’t have a cock to put in her, Rackham.”

Calico Jack eyed Kidd from head to heel, mostly staring at James’ crotch. “Ya an eunuch or somethin’?”

Both Mary and Anne slapped a palm to their faces.

.0.

_The Americas, North-Carolina, June 1720_

That had been three months ago and Edward spend most of it since in Carolina, where he sought after his tutor and master, Ed Thatch. It was Edward’s last plea and hope to save Nassau and with Blackbeard’s help, they could retake back the republic city.

Thatch had no taste for it anymore, much to Edward’s dismay. He had quitted on piracy, quitted on Nassau, quitted on leadership altogether. He was flattered that Edward had come to beg him home, but no man his age had business being a pirate anymore and since there was no Libertalia to strive for, he was finished. 

However, the man had still high faiths for his young protégé. “Ye still lookin’ for that sage fellow?” Thatch asked one evening, with Edward sitting in front of him, sulking more like.

Edward nodded, not all too excited about the prospect of leaving this place without Blackbeard.

“I heard him was aboard the Princess, but she has set her heading for Cape of Africa. It’ll be in a couple o’ weeks and she’s returned to Jamaica.”

“Aye. You have my thanks, mate.”

Blackbeard eyed Edward’s solemn face. “Why, don’t ye just sit there like a barrel o’ wet fish. We’s celebrating me retirement! Oi, Ol’ Johnny,” He pointed at a white-haired sailor who most certainly suited his name. “Uncork this man’s breakfast! And be quick ‘bout it, don’t want him to get as old as ye now!”

Ol’ Johnny was besotted himself and Edward saved him the travel by going over and taking a bottle of rum from his hands. John was as old a sailor as Edward had ever seen; white whiskers, wrinkly around the eyes with spotted skin on his hands. His face was sagged from years of windburn and he lost all his teeth save for one thanks to scurvy. He was surrounded by two more of his mates, as drunk a filly as well they were.

Ol’ Johnny took a breath from his pipe he was smoking once he handed his bottle over to Edward. They were swapping tales, drunk as buccaneers were to get. “A crazed man he is indeed, for I kno’ him is sailing with two women on him ship, the mad fucker.”

One of them spit rum from his lips as he started laughing. “Two, no less? Is one cunt not enough for ‘em, eh?”

Another man waved away both their words. “I heard them were Sirens harlots Calico Jack found adrift some uncharted waters. Enchanted by them songs and their beauty, he took both o’ them onto his ship.”

The name of Calico Jack on their lips caught Edward’s attention. It made him linger long enough to hear what in Neptune’s name there was anything remotely interesting worthy about that oaf Jack Rackham, for these men to gossip of like a couple of fish wives.

Ol’ Johnny told his two companions another version of the rumour. “Nay, I heard they’s be two mermaids, transformed into humans and bewitched Rackham to lay with them and breed more sea demons.”

“Of all men, they pick that fuckin’ drunk to breed with? I pity the children.”

Johnny relit his pipe. “And Calico’s Jolly Roger? Him changed it into a skull with two crossing mermaid tails underneath, for the wenches he took aboard.”

“Mermaids? That’s a bag o’ bullocks, old man. T’is nothing but two crossed swords on his black flag, ye fool!”

Ol’ Johnny wasn’t convinced. “Tails of mermaids, I tell ya.”

“I wish the man all the good faith with two whores on deck. I won’t be surprised if the ill o’ luck they bring with ‘em makes Calico Jack find hisself right into Davy Jones’ locka.”

“That be the kind a luck I’ll favour. Him has two slits to enjoy while I hafta stare up the arse of the lot o’ ya if a voyage takes too long.”

That’s what they be on about? Jack Rackham and the two lasses him had on ship? Edward knew it was Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who he had heard had jumped ship and joined Calico Jack to bring mischief over the seas.

His thoughts wandered to Mary, whom he hasn’t seen in three months and sixteen days - but who was counting? The way they separated was cruel and wrong, and it ached somewhere deep in his chest whenever he recalled her face before she left him for good. He should have stopped her from leaving San Inagua, at least not before they talked this out. But it wasn’t in Edward’s nature to apologize and neither was it in hers. Her temper was hot, as hot as she could be whenever he had her in his arms, and she was as stubborn as anyone he had ever met. She wasn’t like to come and settle things down with him before she left.

It was his fault she left at all.

It appeared she brought Anne Bonny along with her, and since it had become the tittle-taddle of the town that Anne had been hiking her skirts up for that drunk pirate Calico Jack, they all stuck together and left to find some adventure and gold in these West-Indies seas.

Edward had ridden Mary out of his mind, as he had once done with Caroline, and set himself to take Nassau back out of the hands of Woodes Rogers and his sorts. But to do that, Edward needed a man who inspired loyalty and admiration in folk. And there was no man more suited for the task than old Edward Thatch.

That’s how he found himself in Carolina of these colonies; the Americas, where Thatch had taken camp and rooted there, done with pirating and done with Nassau. It wasn’t what Edward wanted, but it is what Thatch had decided and Edward wasn’t one to begrudge Blackbeard from it.

Edward left soon thereafter and he was no less than a week away when he heard that Edward Thatch was branded a pirate once again, was hunted for and done in on one misty morning. It was the worst to hear that they had managed to kill the most famous pirate who had ever lived by such a dishonourable way as sneaking up on a drunken crew, but at least the tale would go into history that Blackbeard fought a hard battle where he got cut at least twenty times and shot no more than five, when he died with a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other.

The great Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Thatch drank damnation in wherever pit of hell he was in now. Edward would drink to that.

.0.

Bartholomew Roberts was the name the Sage went by nowadays. And he had promised Edward to show him the Observatory. Adéwalé didn’t want to follow no such follies and neither did the crew, it appeared. Too late Edward thought that he should have listened to Adéwalé; he shouldn’t have gone alone after Roberts and he ought to tell the Assassins of the place before going. But greed - ah his own greed, it was such that made Edward go behind Roberts to find the Observatory on his own anyway.

In the end he paid the steep price for it.

Roberts betrayed him and left him to die, but bloody, wounded and furious Edward found a way out of that mystical ancient place, only to find that the Jackdaw has flown. Roberts was the only one waiting for him outside, if he was expecting Edward to escape at all.

And to answer the question Edward last heard from Bartholomew Roberts' lips before he passed out was that; no, he had never seen the inside of a Jamaican prison.

It was where Edward found himself when he came to his senses. Stripped of everything except a dirty blouse on his back and some tattered trousers, he spent his days rotting in a cell waiting for his trial to come so they could most likely hang him.

.0.

_Jamaica, Port Royal, August 1720_

A new vessel filled with pirates had been taking in no less than a few days ago and that meant that the prison has been filled too full. There were trials and there were hangings, and all too soon, Edward heard his own trial was coming on.

He was pushed out of his cell the following day, fettered at the hands and shackled by his ankles. Two guards with sharp eyes and stony faces led him to the courtyard, with each a musket in their hands. The courtyard was filled with people; redcoats were standing by, more prisoners fettered and shackled were seated on wooden benches on one side, squabbling crowd on the other side. Edward wondered if so many people had come to see him tried and mayhaps they would speak in his defence.

But it was not his trial they came to see and no more than they came to defend anyone’s poor soul from condemnation either. It were the two women who were on trial they came to see; the miracle, to witness for themselves of how two women braced their selves on ship and indulged into piracy besides. It was unheard of. Women weren’t sailors and they for certain weren’t pirates. Half of Jamaica must have come to the prison in this courtyard, where a self-made courtroom had been put, to convict these two women for what they are. _Pirates._

The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. It has been quite some time since Edward had breathed fresh air that wasn’t foul of the stench inside his cell, and it should have been unjust for on such a fair day, he saw Anne Bonny and the ever so mystic Mary Read side-by-side and manacled in the courtyard.

Their eyes met and it was the worst day Edward had ever accounted for; to see Mary caught and about to be sentenced to die. There was no doubt they would kill her for it. She and Anne, both. And it pained Edward that after everything they went through, after everything they’ve done, they see each other in here, like this, as if some god was playing a cruel jest with their lives. It has been nearly five months since Edward had last seen her, but it felt more so five years.

Anne bit her lip and Mary never let Edward out of her sight when the guards pushed him on his place on the bench. Her dark eyes bore right through him and for once he wished he could read her as easily as he was sure she could read him. Fear crept into his countenance; not for him own, but for her. There was nothing more he’d like to do right now than to break out of his fetters and kill every single guard and persecutor in here until she was free.

It wasn’t going to be like that, though.

Together, Anne and Mary stood before the judge and the man hammered his gavel on the wood for silence. “The charges, sir. I would hear them.” He called to the bailiff, who in turn had to shout so everyone in the courtyard could hear.

“His Majesty’s court contends that the defendants Mary Read and Anne Bonny did piratically, feloniously and in a hostile manner attack, engage and take seven certain fishing boats.” The bailiff called. “For their crimes against those under the protection of His Majesty King George, the law indicates that these two women, Mary Read and Anne Bonny, shall be judged and sentenced by their peers, with the right of defence or otherwise.”

The people began shouting anew. Many screamed for their release, but some others who hated pirates just as much as anyone else did, yelled for their death.

The judge hammered away again. “Moreover,” The bailiff continued, but he wasn’t heard over the noise that came from the crowd.

Too busy Edward was withholding Mary’s gaze, that he didn’t hear two men taking a seat behind him, until a very familiar voice said his name and his whole name.

“Edward James Kenway, born to an English father and Welsh mother. Married at eight-and-ten to Miss Caroline Scott, now estranged.” Woodes Rogers sophisticated voice slithered up Edward’s back.

This was bad. They knew everything. These bloody Templars knew everything about him, about his parents and Caroline. How did they know?

“Let me cut to the chase here, Señor Kenway.” Laureano Torres y Ayala was Rogers' companion, and Edward’s own old acquaintance. Edward had told Torres that he would cut his lips off and feed it to him if he didn’t do what they wanted, once. A man such as Torres wouldn’t forget such a slight, surely. “We know you have been to the Observatory, led by the Sage who now calls himself Bartholomew Roberts. We cannot find him, but you we did, who we are pleasantly surprised to find rotting in a Jamaican prison.”

“Give us the location of the Observatory.”

“If you think I’ll tell you welchers shite-" Edward no more waggled in his shackles and he felt the barrel of a pistol pressed in his side.

“Give it to us,” Rogers warned lowly. “Tell us and you’ll be out of here in a flash, Master Kenway.”

Edward said nothing for a moment and the two gentlemen thought it was him contemplating their offer. “I had the location drawn on a map,” He could feel their Templar eagerness. “And I’ve shoved it up my arse where I know no one would find it.” He had the audacity to chuckle.

But they weren’t amused. “Your wife, the Señorita Caroline you left in Bristol,” Torres started quietly. “She’s a beautiful woman, I am told.”

Edward heard the silent threat as clear as day. “If you so much as touch her, you bastards…!”

“Rogers can keep the hounds at bay. For a time, at least.” The governor of Havana offered instead. “But this will be your faith as well as hers if you fail to cooperate.” He waved a hand to the front of the courtroom, where the trial was still in full charge.

“They lurked upon the high seas and set upon, shoot at and take two merchants sloops. Thus putting the captain and their crew in corporeal fear for their lives.” The bailiff added to however long list of criminal activities the two women had engaged in.

“Oh, rot!” Anne threw in with an aloof swagger, even if she was not allowed to speak unless spoken to. “Them ninnies who surrender at a couple o’ lassies, aye? They be a corporeal wuss, a’right.”

The crowd laughed but both judge and bailiff turned red in the face. “You shut your dirty mouth, you!” The judge hammered away again and again.

The bailiff went on, witnesses were brought forth and while Anne quipped some jack tar jest one minute or the other to keep the folk entertained, Mary Read was as silent as the grave. Edward tried to find her eyes again, to see whether she had given up this fight for her life, unlike Anne who still spit about like a hellcat, but Mary wasn’t looking at him.

Instead her eyes were zoomed to the back of the courtyard and Edward turned to look who was there as well. There was no one who stood out at first glance. The folk was rowdy and shifty, but there was one man who stood still as stone as if he was one of the guards as well. He was a black man, dressed like any other commoner but for the bracelet that was knotted around his forearm. It took no more than one guess why Mary was looking at him or why the man’s aura was so serious. And if Edward leaked a bit around with his Sense, he knew the man for what he was; an assassin associate.

“We have other ways of tickling the information out of you, Edward Kenway.” It was Rogers who said it, but both him and Laureano Torres stood from their place to leave. “Remember our words.”

At the very time, the judge rapped his gavel down for the last time. “You, Mary Read and Anne Bonny are to go from hence to the place from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution.”

The very word got Edward’s blood up and in a rash decision he took to his feet, but the two redcoated guards who had brought him here in the first place forcibly pulled him down roughly back on the bench.

At the very least, his movements caught Mary’s attention again. He wanted to stand up and scream how this wasn’t the way they should have been reunited and that it must have been his fault that she got caught in the first place, but the pointy tip of a musket was shoved in his face to keep still.

“Of which you shall be severally hanged by the neck until you are severally dead, dead, _dead_!” The judge continued, who had not seen Edward about to throw a riot had he not been handled by the guards. “May God in his infinitive mercy be merciful on each of your souls!”

Mary straightened in her manacles, speaking for the first time and she was looking directly at Edward when she exclaimed her next part, more so to him than anyone else. “We’re pregnant!”

That was the moment Edward’s world tipped and changed for good.

In the far off he heard the whole of the crowd gasp and the whispers started immediately, but he was stilled on his bench.

She was… _pregnant_?

“What?!” The judge screamed, turning even redder than he had been before.

If Mary saw any doubt in Edward’s eyes, her voice willed it away. “Did y’all hear that?!”

There was an uproar of everyone. Pirates who still needed to be sentences, stony guards who left behind their stony expressions for surprise and on-viewers alike started to shout or point at the two women.

Anne reacted as if she wasn’t in on Mary’s plan to reveal such information to them, but then she seemed to agree and remember the law herself. “Aye! And ya can’t hang a woman quick with child, can ye?”

“What in the devil did she say?”

The bailiff looked none too pleased. “They plead their bellies, m’lord.”

More uproar. Edward mouth dried to sandpaper as he held Mary’s regard, urging her with his gaze to tell her if she was true.

And there the judge rapped his gavel on wood again. “Quiet. Quiet!” He told the people, yelling to be heard. He turned to the two women. “If what you say is true, then your executions will be stayed. But only until your term is up!”

Again Anne delivered another one of her quips. “Then I’ll be up the duff the next time ye come knockin’.”

Even so, Mary had said nothing more and she didn’t need to.

She was pregnant… and all Mary’s eyes said that, _yes_ , it was his.

.0.

A new purpose had grown inside of him. Everything turned to clarity as soon as she said those words and he knew what he had to do. He won’t be hanged, not as long as he held the information of the Observatory from Woodes Rogers and Laureano Torres.

She just bought them time, bless her.

They had already guided Anne and Mary away to their new accommodations and him too, they were returning to his cell. It was a risk doing what he did next, but it had to be done and he knew no one was to take his life unless on the orders of Woodes Rogers.

Edward hit against his two companion guards with a hard shoulder and taken by surprise the men lost their balance. Edward couldn’t move much, but he twisted on his heel, shuffled until he was in hearing distance of the one man who could mean their future.

“Get to Ah Tabai!” Edward hissed at the dark man whose associate with the assassins was prominent. “Tell him to find someone in Bristol, in England! He’ll know!” It was no good because guards were surrounding Edward already pulling at his shackles and his arms. “Find her!”

The man nodded, turned and run. Taking their chance of escape with him.

.0.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m excited for the next part! There are so much things I wished would have gone differently for this pair, I took it quite further than I originally intended for the next chapter, but I’m sure you’ll be pleased to see what’s coming.
> 
> Until next time!
> 
> EDIT: The part where Mary is giving out free coin to the people of San Andreas is based on the deleted voice memos that never made it into the game. Some of these were directly extracted from those voice memos, straight from the lovely Olivia Morgan (Read/Kidd voice actress) herself. If you didn't know about these memos before, I suggest you find them on Tumblr, where I had the pleasure of hearing them myself. 
> 
> I still cry that they deleted more scenes where Mary was present from the game. 
> 
> P.S In case anyone is interested, the steamy little part where Edward and Mary are busy behind a Tavern in this story, there's a specific Flamenco jig playing that is right out of the game as well. Should you wanna hear it, it's "Bulerria" one of the Cuban tavern themes.


End file.
